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Is it wrong to use pathos in an argument?

I have read up a bit on debating techniques and I am a bit confused, should I use pathos or not? While many sources claim that pathos is a very important part of an argument I have also read that pathos could be considered to be the same as appeal to emotion which is a logical fallacy. I understand why appeal to emotion isn't valid since it is a method of manipulating your opponent without being logical, and from what I have understood that is exactly what pathos is. Have I just misunderstood what pathos and appeal to emotion means? Or is it a great debate whether or not you should use pathos in an argument.

The thing about formal validity is that it doesn't track *relevance*. Whether a thing is important or interesting or valuable isn't reflected as an aspect of its syntactic or logical structure. That's something we bring to the table when we're evaluating the facts. So using emotions in an argument doesn't make it invalid, just like it doesn't make it valid, in this formal sense. Pathos or emotional spin are important parts of our communicative strategies, because they give cues and signals as to what the speaker thinks is relevant. And that's cognitively crucial to us. We're not robots, cranking through formal deductions all the time. Usually, evaluating what is relevant is an important aspect of any discussion. The problem is when someone tries to use emotion to overwhelm reason. This is when it becomes disruptive. When someone stops listening or talking because they can't even, or uses overblown emotion to try to derail a discussion, that's when it's a problem. It's remarkable how fragile a thing discussion can be. It's so amazingly easy for a discussion to go off the rails because one party gets too worked up. So if you want a good talk, or a sporting debate, keeping yourself under emotional control is pretty important. But that's different from not having any feelings at all about the subject, or not expressing any.

ELI5: How much of a Pixar/Dreamworks movie is actually drawn by a human?

I never really understood what the work of the computer is. Are there algorithms for locomotion, gravity, fluid mechanics, etc., or are these things drawn directly on the scene by an artist? Basically, is creating a Pixar scene closer to drawing in Paint or designing a video game?

> Are there algorithms for locomotion, gravity, fluid mechanics, etc., Yes! > or are these things drawn directly on the scene by an artist? Animators place the 3-D models into scenes and define how they move, then the computer actually animates them. Some scenes, like characters moving, are practically animated entirely by hand - because there are no algorithms to get across certain movements. Sometimes the "real" equations for things like, e.g., gravity or magnetism aren't as much "fun". Animators sometimes come up with their own algorithms for these things that look real enough to be believable, but maybe a bit cartoony. One example is Rapunzel's hair - the animators tried using real gravity and real physics of motion but her hair would have been too heavy and unwieldy. So they gave it physics of its own that looks beautiful even though it's not realistic.

as a layman outsider how do I educate myself in the social sciences?

I found some textbooks online (economics, psychology,sociology, statistics) thats a good start, and some youtube tutorials with some bits of research advice. But my problem is: how do I judge if a paper is valid? Besides checking the statistical methods and inferences. Like, I would love materials about basic research and "peer review" and stuff, at the moment I skim papers (read conclusion and abstract mostly) out of interest but have little ways to check if the conclusions are correct. Also im struggling with mental health, and I got nothing but a high school degree (a type that only gets you into plumbing/low level IT/military/secretary/etc) tl;dr what resources are freely available that can make me properly read , verify and judge psychology (etc) papers?

As far as making sure papers are valid- be sure you're looking at peer reviewed journals. If you're reading secondary sources, try to look up the original papers. Scientific American and the Atlantic tend to do the best job of relaying article information. Learning more about research methods- check out Healthcare Triage on YT. They have two playlists called "Experimental Design" and "Analysis and Reporting" which are wonderful. The guy who hosts it is a pediatrician and writes a lot about health care policy. Happy reading!

CMV: Allowing newborns with life crippling disability to live is immoral and inconsiderate of their future.

So, when i was born it was known almost immediately that I would be plagued with medical issues my entire life. I don't wish to get into detail but I still consider myself a lucky case, able to function passibly on both a mental and physical level. While it is has been extremely difficult for me to work through the issues I've faced I have managed to do so. However, there is much worse out there. While I have no hatred for the mentally or physically disabled, I don't believe we should be willingly letting them grow into adults in our society. For instance, lets say a child is born, with no functioning limbs. This person is almost guaranteed to never hold a job, live independantly, and debatably live a fufilling life. There could be risks of their unfortunate condition being passed on to their offspring if they have any children of their own. A parent choosing to raise this child is willingly inflicting a lifetime of suffering upon their own child, simply because they wanted to be a parent. However I don't think the same way when it comes to late onset medical issues of the same degree. A child old enough to think somewhat independantly should still have a chance at a successful life if they managed to get into an accident that would inflict the same loss of limbs upon them. At that point they are already a free thinking being and obviously ending a sapient person's life without their input is morally wrong. Yet at the same time, the child born with this condition will at some point grow to become free thinking themself, but I still think letting them get to that point in the first place is entirely self-centered of the parents. edit: copying my response to u/togtogtog as they have shifted my perspective: morally choosing someone's life or death without consent neither side could really be seen as the correct one without knowledge of how things would turn out in the end. My view was intended to save the affected from the struggles i had faced and if some with similar or worse difficulty did not face it a blanket decision cannot be pre-determined. I still don't think anyone should have to ever deal with that, but openly available assisted suicide seems to me now to be the better choice. i suppose my experience is different from others as my personal issues only have gotten worse with age, which was known from the start but ignored. i had little accomodation for my differences and that is likely a large contribution to the depression i associated with my disabilities, looking back. So really I guess we just need to pave the world to better accommodate the differently abled, though i still hold my ground that someone with a severe genetic disability should not reproduce as it is a willful choice to produce another person who is very likely to have unnecessary difficulty in life.

To you, what is the practical difference between an adult who is born without limbs and an adult who lost their limbs as a child? Also, would you be in favor of killing an infant who has an accident that leaves it crippled?

Does toasting a loaf of bread alter the nutrition levels?

Food technologist here just finished with university. The short answer is more or less no, the nutrients will not change significantly. You'll get somewhat less water content, but that's not really a nutrient in a technical sense. The long answer involves a short trip into the delicious realm of food chemistry. Why is toast so tasty and awesome compared to boring sliced bread? Well, amino acids (aka protein building blocks) will react with reducing sugars (sugars with an aldehyde group) to produce all sorts of yummy flavour compounds. This is called the Maillard reaction, which occurs at pretty much any temperature for many foods, but its most obvious above 150 degrees Celsius or so. These compounds tend to have a brown colour due to their structure. The flavours produced are highly dependent on the components available. That's why the brown stuff on toast tastes different to the brown stuff on your steak. In bread, the gluten (protein) and starch (glucose, i.e. the sugar) are degraded. But the quantity that's decayed is very small relative to your whole bread slice. Nutritional fortifications in bread (commonly folic acid, iodine) are pretty heat stable, so that's not going to change much either. Finally, a possible carcinogen known as acrylamide may form in starch-rich foods when exposed to high temperatures. However, there has never been any cases directly linking the chemical with cancer in humans. If you're worried, don't be. The chances of you dying from this are so low there's probably tonnes of other stuff to worry about in your life instead.

What exactly does it mean that a vaccine/booster etc is X% effective?

Typically they are referring to “Relative risk reduction”. Take 100 people and give them vaccine, 100 people who don’t get it (or better, get a placebo). After some period of time, see how many in each group got the virus. Let’s say 2 in the treatment group got the ‘vid and 20 in the placebo group. 2/100=0.02 20/100=0.2 So the relative risk reduction is= (0.2-0.02)/0.2 = 0.9 So the relative risk reduction is 90%. You can think of it as having a 90% less chance of catching the virus if you get the vaccine compared to if you don’t.

How do particle accelerators isolate certain particles if particles are unavoidably everywhere? Aren't there many unaccounted for particles in the way of observation?

From my understanding, one of the many things particle accelerators are used for is making two or more particles collide at a high speed. How can these two particles be isolated, and then properly aligned for a collision without other particles getting in the way? And if scientists want to collide particular particles, how do they physically transfer the desired particle into the accelerator?

We don’t work with individual particles at a time, we create beams of many particles. The particles start in a source, where you usually heat up some material, maybe shoot microwaves at it, and create a plasma. Once you’ve got it in a plasma form, you can manipulate it using electric fields to pull out particles of a certain charge (positive or negative). From then on, it’s just guiding the beam around with electric (at low energies) and magnetic (at high energies) fields, and accelerating them with electric fields. The process of extracting particles from the source is not 100% efficient, but you still get a beam out. When the beam is still at low energies, focusing is done with electrostatic fields. Once the beam is moving pretty fast, it becomes more efficient to focus them with magnetic fields. In either case, electrodes or coils of wire are shaped in just the right way to provide focusing of the beam just like a lens focuses light. As for other particles getting in the way, everywhere the beam propagates is usually held under vacuum (for charged particle beams).

I am making a bank program in java, I'm trying to generate unique bank account numbers

So I'm doing homework for a class and I have to make a banking system where you can sign up and make an account. However I have difficulty trying to create an account number that wont repeat itself. Can anyone help me with this please?

usually you would use a database to store the accounts, the idea of signing up would mean you need to store that data and create an account number which is like a key to that data. Most databases have an Identity column which is ideal for Primary Keys and could be used as a unique account number. I am keeping in mind this is for school so sequential numbers is not likely an issue.

[Marvel&DC] I'm magically thrown into either of this of these universes, what would be the fastest to get superpowers or a way to not be defenseless?

* Volunteer as a herald for a cosmic being * Expose yourself to exotic radiation * Successfully lift Mjolnir * Learn magic * Get a job in a laboratory and hope for a freak accident * Your natural physical peak is now higher. Train in the martial arts or something. * Hang out with superheroes and hope something rubs off * Invent something really clever that gives you superpowers or the functional equivalent

I think Christianity is ultimately detrimental to society, CMV.

Okay, here's my reasons: **1. There is no distinct Christianity.** There are thousands of *very, very* similar belief systems that all read the same Hebrew and Greek texts (albeit different translations) and profess, at the very least, similar ideas about a prophet/man-God named Jesus Christ. Together they collectively contain "Christianity," but if you look to any specific denomination you'll find lots of different ideas about minor issues like cessationism or transubstatiation, but also very big differences over who Jesus Christ even was (many mainstream Methodists, for example, profess the Nicene Creed and the belief in Jesus as a man-God but don't believe in a literal kind of atonement they way an Assembly of Gods church would.) **2. The good stuff about Christianity is overhyped.** What has Christianity given the world? If you ask a Christian, it's love, peace, understanding, forgiveness - hardly values that exist alone in the Christian belief system (they are universal human values found throughout all cultures and belief systems). If anything, the Christian belief system is rather misanthropic in its diagnoses of societal ills - diagnosing symptoms as the cause, encouraging a belief that humans are not capable of charity, grace, and good works without the enabling or encouragement of a God (without whom they'd be "disgraceful sinners"). And that's not even to mention anything about hell (that's number 5). Or maybe they'd point to history and the overwhelming good Christians have brought to the world - from hospitals to schools to orphanages (why do you think most hospitals are named after saints?). Again, this assumes that hospitals or schools couldn't have been built without Christian charity or grace or initiative - but about the U.S. public education system, which has built *far* more schools in the U.S. than any religious institution? Schools and hospitals are great tools of society and will be built with or without Christian influence. **3. The bad stuff about Christianity is often ignored (or written off as "not real Christianity".** Ever hear the phrase "This is not what Christianity is about"? It's kind of a subjective statement, often invoked by people who align with Christianity's softer side - but it creates a false dichotomy, it assumes there is a standard people are falling short of (again, a standard that is different for every branch of Christianity.) But Christianity has a whole host of side effects that, endorsed by Jesus or not, have come to accompany Christian practice around the world. Homophobia, racism, and sexism are all encouraged in the Bible, including bizarre laws that demand death for a young woman's sexuality - in other words, the philosophy that's supposed to unite everyone also has some pretty compelling reasons why you're allowed to condemn and judge those that are different from you. How many Bible verses were able to support slave owners, opponents of the Civil Rights movement, or opponents of marriage equality? **4. The bad stuff about the rest of the world is overhyped.** A central idea to Christianity is to be "not of this world" (John 18:36). In vague terms, society outside the church is often spiritually bankrupt, or deficient, or guilty of a whole host of sins. This is another misdiagnosis that manages to ignore the huge amount of good - pick any benefit of modern society, from cell phones to the internet to healthcare to entertainment. They do not stem directly from the Christian belief system, is there something morally inferior about them? In addition, this encourages a black and white view of society that only sees good and evil winning or losing rather than complex issues and events with a whole host of factors feeding in to each other. It is considered evil that there is enough food in the world to feed everyone but there is still starvation - but starvation is a problem that stems from much more than a blanket term like "evil" or a character like "Satan" (if you subscribe that far) and are results of political systems and economics and bureaucratic corruption - perhaps resulting in evil, but correctly diagnosing helps us to fix problems better. **5. The idea of hell is barbaric and outdated.** One of the most powerful ideas in Christianity is the doctrine of hell. Again, depending on which Christian you talk to, you'll get different ideas about what hell is. For some, like the Catholic church and most protestant denominations, Hell is a real place - maybe not physically, but definitely spiritually - of punishment for "bad deeds" on earth. Maybe it's a lake of fire, or maybe it's just "separation from God's love," it's all the same concept - or actions are being recorded and observed, and universal justice will be eventually applied. This belief promotes irrational fear - many people suffer from unnecessary anxiety about the threat of hell, and the worst that most of them has done is get a speeding ticket. **6. It encourages a fear of human knowledge outside of the belief system.** Today, thanks to discoveries in the past 2 centuries, we can tell a newborn child how they got here, what their made of, and how their bodies work. Yet Christians are usually the first to question these answers, and support ignorance rather than the facts that modern biology, anthropology, and archaeology are built on. They can be the first to dismiss climate change because it doesn't fit into their worldview that God would allow something like that to happen, or that man is that powerful, or even because they don't care if the world ends (God's going to build a new one.) Which leads me to... **7. It's fatalistic and small-minded.** Christianity promises a destroyed world and the birth of a new one. It answers questions so we don't need to keep asking them (where did the world come from? why do we die?). It discourages curiosity. Could we become a space-faring species? Christianity doesn't care, there's not much of a blueprint in the Bible or an appreciation for what humans can become. The world gets destroyed, God fixes everything. Why invest in the future, or work on society's problems if it's all going to fall apart anyways? **8. It's not true.** This is easily the most contentious of my points, but I guess what I mean by true is "objectively testable." In the past few centuries humanity has drastically changed the world into something better capable at supporting humans (we've managed to create 7 billion of us from a hard-luck species that emigrated out of Africa in an evolutionary blink of an eye) and we're quickly finding fewer and fewer limits when it comes to technology and innovation. We've figured out how to travel from one planetary body to another, and we're the first creatures in the earth's history to know where how we got here and where exactly here is. This knowledge and level of innovation was encouraged by the scientific method, a rigorous commitment to testing ideas and following patterns, and a belief that if it can't be tested (wether logically, like Einstein's thought-experiments, or practically, like most lab tests) or observed, then it isn't worth considering (why waste time positing theories about invisible creatures playing croquet in space until we see the data that points to such strange ideas?). The scientific method cuts through our brain's superstitious, pattern-hungry and easily deceived senses to find *universal truths* rather than subjective ones (and, unless Jesus comes back, or Allah opens up the sky, or Vishnu appears in Washington D.C. to hold a press conference, religious views are subjective). It allows us to connect as creatures over the universal laws that govern the world we live in (phsyics, chemistry) as well as the complex functions that keep us running, and allows us to adapt even better to this world (technology). Best of all, the scientific method allows for innovation and adaptation because there are no hallowed truths - only evidence. Christians can claim faith in spite of evidence, or a lack of beauty and mystery in a science-dogged world, but the commitment to scientific reasoning has put cell phones in their pockets and Modern Family on their television or laptop every week. But back to the main point - **"a fool builds his house on sand."** This nugget holds true despite whether or not Jesus was God, and I don't think I have to go very far to explain why idealogies built on false premises, while sometimes benign, can lead to problems (witch trials, faith healing, the mother f-ing Holocaust). So, CMV! What's so great about Christianity that can't be found elsewhere? How is Christianity misrepresented? EDIT1 - I've been on a shoot, now I'm reading everybody's responses....will respond soon! EDIT2 - Okay, done for today, looking forward to continuing discussion tomorrow. Thanks for some great posts and ideas, fellow redditors! EDIT3 - I've bitten off more than I can chew! I've thought of a better changemyview that's more limited in focus, there's simply too much here - I can give in on a few points, here, but I still don't see how Christianity, *if* built on a false premise, is healthy for society. But I also see that it does a lot of good (with some side effects).

A good man can exercise his Christian faith and help a person in need. A bad man can wear a Christian facade to elevate his own needs. It is the same with anything- people are good and bad. Atheism has as many assholes as Christianity.

what's the difference between Foucault's normalisation and Gramsci's cultural hegemony?

Normalization is one of the many mechanisms of cultural hegemony. Cultural hegemony is accomplished via the alienation of labor, economic exploration, physical violence/restraint, and normalizing institutions, such as schools, churches, and prisons. Additionally, not all normalization is in the service of cultural hegemony. If you go to counter-hegemonic revolutionary boot camp, you will still be normalized by the training and educational process.

What would happen if we split a pair of quarks?

What would the energy release be like? Would there be any energy release? Is this even possible?

If you pull two bound quarks (quark/antiquark pair, really), you will put enough energy in the system to create more quark pairs. So, if you do it slowly, you may end up pulling two "mesons" (bound state of 1 quark and 1 antiquark). What it might look like (the dashes represent that the quarks are interacting with each other): q--q q-----q q--q q--q

[X-Men] Why are so many mutants blue?

As opposed to other possible colors?

Maybe the genetic markers for the X-gene predispose to blue coloration in some kind of link, like red hair and freckles or needing more paint medicine, or blue eyes and higher alcohol tolerance. Or, y'know, lots of people have relation to Apokalypse.

ELI5: Why can I go from morning to night, and my mouth tastes fine, but after only a few hours of sleep, it tastes like a bum's nutsack?

During the day you open your mouth, eat, speak, and do many other things that change the contents of your mouth. Not in sleep. What's more important though, is how you know what a bum's nutsack tastes like.

hey small town girl here tryna educate herself by reading an intro to philosophy textbook. would be very grateful for help regarding what 'philosophy can be abstract and theoretical' means? emphasis on the abstract part. does abstract in this context refer to ideas relating to that which doesn't inv

\-olve a referent to the physical word and if so, how is that even possible? for example when u take a fictional invention like a mermaid or something, tho this invention does not exist in reality, isn't it founded on a culmination of different referents to the physical world? apologies in advance for my stupidity. yours sincerely, the idiot

Abstract can be juxtaposed to "Material", or "Concrete". If you think abstractly, you think about how to categorise and evaluate the "material world" in ways that aren't immediately obvious to that world. In other words, you have to make up concepts which help you understand the world around you. These concepts aren't immediately knowable from you interacting with that world, but are developed through reflection, and so brought to bear on it from outside. This is what abstract means in its root latin--it means "detached", "apart from". A simple example of abstract thinking would be calling your friend (let's pretend their name is Pete) a human. You are applying a "detached" concept from outside your material experience of Pete ("human") to help you better understand Pete using categories that aren't self-evident to your relationship with Pete. You can also abstract further from this; you can call humans mammals, and mammals animals, and animals organisms, and so on. Philosophy, when it is abstract, deals with these higher order concepts of categorisation and attempts to sort between them to get at what the world is, and what it does, on a conceptual level. You are quite right when you say all abstraction is based on referents in the physical world. Abstraction depends on some kind of physical experience to be sensible--it is only our place as thinking, feeling beings in the world which gives us the "raw material" of experience to begin abstraction. What makes something abstract is NOT being unrelated to the physical world--it's rather that it's not *immediately obvious* to our experinece of the physical world. Abstraction lies in this "bringing in from outside"-ness, where you think in terms of ideas, concepts and categories which have been developed through reflection and evaluation. So when someone says philosophy can be abstract and theoretical, they are saying so because abstract and theoretical are in many ways sister concepts. If you think in abstractions, you will often think "theoretically" to develop broad-strokes stories, premises, and systems to arrange your abstract concepts. This is how you get biological systems like phylum, kingdom, species, organism (to keep to the above examples). You should note these explanations will not hold exactly across all philosophical texts as many thinkers will develop their own systems for understanding terms like "abstract" and "theory". However this should help you get a broad-strokes foot-hold on the general usage of the term.

ELI5 : How do we know cold is the absence of heat and not the other way around?

Temperature is a measurement of energy, specifically kinetic energy on a molecular scale with warmer things having more of this energy than colder things. Because we warm something up by adding energy we define warm/hot as the presence of this energy. Since there is nothing that we can "add" to make an object colder, cold is inherently the absence of this energy or in other words, the absence of heat.

ELI5: How are scientists able to find out the temperature of the earth thousands of years ago ?

A proxy is a permanent or semi-permanent record that responds in a known manner to certain environmental variables, and this is what is used by scientists to reconstruct information about the environment (such as temperature) in the past. A huge number of proxies are used by scientists to infer things about the past - which one you use depends on what timespans you're interested in, what environmental variables you are trying to reconstruct, where the region of interest is geographically, and so on. In your question you've specified thousands of years, which is actually very young geologically speaking. The key proxies of interest for these timescales are ice records and tree rings (although others such as corals exist). Ice cores can be used to reconstruct temperature because the ratio between the two main oxygen isotopes (atoms that are chemically identical but have slightly different masses) depends on a number of factors, including sea surface temperature. If you can control for non-temperature related factors and then use a calibration curve (which we can use known instrumental records over the past few centuries and lab experiments for), then we can use these oxygen isotope ratios to infer temperature. Tree rings can also be used to reconstruct temperature because the growth of a tree depends on several parameters such as temperature and rainfall in a known fashion. If you know how to calibrate growth patterns for a specific tree species (which you can do by comparing tree ring patterns to known, modern temperature records) then you can in turn infer temperature changes in the past.

CMV: Shared living situations (having a house mate) are unpleasant, unsanitary, mentally and emotionally taxing, and something best reserved for young, college-aged people, not mature working adults.

Hi CMV, I'm about to move into a new house, one I own. This is my first experience with home ownership; up until now I've been a renter. My spouse and I are going to be geographically separated for 3 years. The house has 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. I really, really don't want to share this house with anyone other than my spouse, but that's not going to be able to happen for at least 3 years. I can afford the mortgage payments without a tenant and I'd much rather have the second bedroom as an office. I like my privacy. I like being able to make a mess and not worry about cleaning it up right away. I like being able to wander around in my underwear. I like being able to start a project in the living room or leave dishes in the sink if I'm feeling lazy. I don't want to share a bathroom. I worry about the potential headaches of having a tenant--I've never had a positive experience with a roommate, and I haven't really lived with anyone except my spouse for several years. However, my spouse really thinks I should take on a renter for the 2nd bedroom. His arguments are that it will help us pay down the mortgage faster (especially if I'm making full mortgage payments on top of what the tenant is paying), that if I have a hard time paying the mortgage it will make it less difficult to make up the shortfall, or that if we don't put the tenant payments towards the mortgage we can use the money to invest elsewhere. He says I don't need the 2nd bedroom for anything, I can set up a desk in my own room, or use the garage for projects and storage (there's a large single car detached garage). So, CMV. Why should I take a tenant when I think it's going to be nothing but unpleasantness and pain? _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

Since you're in control of the situation (you own the home, you're taking the tenant on) you've got full control of the situation which means two things: 1. You have the ability to interview and make sure that whoever lives with you is 100% up to par. 2. You have the ability to eject said tenant if you don't like them. So really it's a win win situation for you. Not only do you have the ability to cut your cost of living down but you also have the ability to take on the exact person that you want to live with and retain the ability to get rid of them as soon as they pose any problem. So you either get to live with someone you like while cutting your costs down or you get to live alone because you can't find the perfect tenant. That seems like a pretty decent deal. Just make sure that when you take on the tenant that you have the chance to interview them and make sure they're someone you can deal with and add clauses to your sub-let contract that they can be evicted on short notice (like two-three weeks).

ELI5: Why, in humans, are males generally larger than females when it is the opposite in most other species?

Humans, like most non-human primates, have sexual dimorphism in which the males tend to be larger than the females. Some primates (like chimpanzees and bonobos) see the males almost twice the size of females. Sexual dimorphism appears in body size, muscle mass, canine teeth, craniofacial structure, and even sometimes deepening voices. There are very few primate species that have reverse dimorphism (females larger than males), so it appears to be "normal" that humans display the same dimorphism that other primates "typically" have.

There are statements floating around online that states "white supremacists should not be allowed a voice" or to present their side on TV. How would the ancient philosophers such as Socrates, Plato, etc react to this? Do they have any similar situations in their times and how were they viewed?

There are a lot of ancient philosophers. It would be a monumental task to write up answers for all of them. One place to start would perhaps be Plato's *Republic*, which has a classic argument in favor of censoring harmful views.

ELI5: Why is Neutralization an Exothermic Reaction?

From what I know and read, bonding atoms release energy in the form of heat. Can someone explain it in details? Using HCl + NaOH reaction as an example will be helpful as well. \-Thanks in Advance!

First let's keep in mind that the rule is as follows: Breaking a given bond is always endothermic Forming a given bond is always exothermic When we talk about whether a ***reaction*** is exothermic or endothermic, we are talking about the summation of the individuals bonds broken and formed and the net energy release or absorbed. For example, dissociating Na from OH is endothermic. Same for H and Cl. But the bonding of Na and Cl, and that of H and OH, is exothermic. To know whether the neutralization reaction releases or absorbs energy, you need to know whether the energy needed for the endothermic part is less or more than the energy released by the exothermic part. If you look at how much energy it takes to break Na from OH and H from Cl, then how much energy you get for bonding Na and Cl and bonding H and OH (you can do that by looking at heat of formation tables and such), you sum those and realize you at the end of the reaction, there is net release of energy, which is why it's exothermic.

Do the nutritional facts on chewing gum assume you swallow the gum?

Had this thought while enjoying a piece of gum.

The process of mastication combined with the secretion of saliva do a fine job of extracting most of the carbohydrates and other soluble compounds that exist in chewing gum. When you swallow, the compounds solubilized in one's saliva go through the same digestive/absorptive processes like any other foodstuff. When all of this is "extracted" one is left with the flavorless, goey lump we associate with gum that has been chewed well beyond flavor. It is likely that this mass is somewhat undigestable or unusable by the body, contributing nothing to caloric content.

[Comics] not including the Green lanterns, are there anybody else that can use will power as a strength like they do in anime

Psychics are often portrayed as exhorting willpower to strengthen their powers, and sometimes collapse when over worked. In fact, all Marvel mutants seem to have an ability to "push" their powers to another level, and this can take a physical strain

AskScience AMA Series: We are Cosmologists, Experts on the Cosmic Microwave Background, Gravitational Lensing, the Structure of the Universe and much more! Ask Us Anything!

We are a bunch of cosmologists from the Cosmology from Home 2020 conference. Ask us anything, from our daily research to the organization of a large conference during COVID19! We have some special experts on + Inflation: The mind-bogglingly fast expansion of the Universe in a fraction of the first second. It turned tiny quantum fluctuation into the seeds for the galaxies and clusters we see today + The Cosmic Microwave background: The radiation reaching us from a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. It shows us how our universe was like, 13.4 billion years ago + Large Scale Structure: Matter in the Universe forms a "cosmic web" with clusters, filaments and voids. The positions of galaxies in the sky shows imprints of the physics in the early universe + Dark Matter: Most matter in the universe seems to be "Dark Matter", i.e. not noticeable through any means except for its effect on light and other matter via gravity + Gravitational Lensing: Matter in the universe bends the path of light. This allows us to "see" the (invisible) dark matter in the Universe and how it is distributed + *And ask anything else you want to know!* Answering your questions tonight are + Alexandre Adler: u/bachpropagate I’m a PhD student in cosmology at Stockholm University. I mainly work on modeling sources of systematic errors for cosmic microwave background polarization experiments. You can find me on twitter @BachPropagate. + Alex Gough: u/acwgough PhD student: Analytic techniques for studying clustering into the nonlinear regime, and on how to develop clever statistics to extract cosmological information. Previous work on modelling galactic foregrounds for CMB physics. Twitter: @acwgough. + Arthur Tsang: u/onymous_ocelot Strong gravitational lensing and how we can use perturbations in lensed images to learn more about dark matter at smaller scales. + Benjamin Wallisch: Cosmological probes of particle physics, neutrinos, early universe, cosmological probes of inflation, cosmic microwave background, large-scale structure of the universe. + Giulia Giannini: u/astrowberries PhD student at IFAE in Spain. Studies weak lensing of distant galaxies as cosmological probes of dark energy. + Hayley Macpherson: u/cosmohay. Numerical (and general) relativity, and cosmological simulations of large-scale structure formation + Katie Mack: u/astro_katie. cosmology, dark matter, early universe, black holes, galaxy formation, end of universe + Robert Lilow: (theoretical models for the) gravitational clustering of cosmic matter. (reconstruction of the) matter distribution in the local Universe. + Robert Reischke: /u/rfreischke Large-scale structure, weak gravitational lensing, intensity mapping and statistics + Shaun Hotchkiss: u/just_shaun large scale structure, fuzzy dark matter, compact object in the early universe, inflation. Twitter: @just_shaun + Stefan Heimersheim: u/Stefan-Cosmo, 21cm cosmology, Cosmic Microwave Background, Dark Matter. Twitter: @AskScience_IoA + Tilman Tröster u/space_statistics: weak gravitational lensing, large-scale structure, statistics + Valentina Cesare u/vale_astro: PhD working on modified theories of gravity on galaxy scale We'll start answering questions from **19:00 GMT/UTC** on Friday (12pm PT, 3pm ET, 8pm BST, 9pm CEST) as well as live streaming our discussion of our answers via [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBAtZqfKF24). Looking forward to your questions, ask us anything!

Question for everyone, but definitely /u/acwgough in particular. Are there any computational barriers standing in the way of a better understanding (or verification) of some of these theories? How useful would 10x or 100x more compute power be for your work? I'd also be curious to hear about the hardware used for these simulations, and any open source software packages used. Thanks!

ELI5: Why do treadmills and elliptical machines have that 5 minute cool down time after a programmed workout. Is it necessary?

Short answer - intense exercise causes changes to your circulatory system, especially in your legs. A rapid and sudden STOP in intense exercise can cause a sudden problem with things like dizziness or loss of consciousness. Since treadmills are typically in places where a person who drops unconscious might get hurt and start a lawsuit. they incorporate a cooldown to help prevent this, and they can always blame you for misusing the machine if you ignore it.

ELI5: How does a turbo work on a car? And what's the difference with a supercharger?

A cars engine is effectively an air pump. It sucks air in and blows air out. Fuel, compression, and spark are added to make explosions and power, but the most important limiting factor is air. You don’t really need more spark for more power, nor do you really need more compression from the combustion chamber.. and adding fuel is easy, but it has to be a certain ratio. Every 1 molecule of fuel requires 14 molecules of air. You need a lot of air to make more power. The traditional way to get more air is by making the engine bigger. If you have a bigger engine with more room in the cylinders, then more air is moved through it. Turbo and superchargers are a different way to solve for the problem. Instead of making the engine bigger, you make the air *denser*. By compressing the air, you force more into the same amount of space, so a smaller engine can move the same volume of air that a larger engine can because the air is more tightly packed as it moves through it. Turbocharger compressors are spun by exhaust gasses, which is more efficient, but also typically more peaky and power is less linear. Supercharger compressors are driven directly from the crankshaft via a belt (similar to your alternator). They are less efficient because the belt-drive takes some power away from the engine, but they produce more linear power.

ELI5: How is new origami created? Do they grab paper and just start folding and see what happens, or is there a mathematical/formulaic approach?

Some origami pieces are insanely complicated, and I wouldn't think that the first person to figure out that unique combination of folds could do so just by folding and seeing what happens. So I wonder if theirs a more formulaic process behind origami creation. Unless it is just that simple. I don't know! Explain it like I'm five!

Yes, there is a very mathematical aproach on how to create new and complex models. The easiest one is extending an existing base and adding new details, e.g. toes, mouth etc.. A base being the simplest way of representing a stick figure of the model you want to fold. Next comes circle packing. In it you use the advantage of knowing the correlation between the flat square and the finished model. Each detail represents a circle on the square. So if you add a few squares on a paper and follow the rules on how to combine them, you should get the expected result. Folding in further detail is a challenge to the creator. This works aswell with box packing, replacing the circles by squares, which allows even more complex models like Black Forest Cukkoo Clock or the amazing Ryu-Zin. The best book to get into creating own origami is Robert J. Langs Origami Design Secrets, though it is very long and still pretty challenging.

ELI5: Why is rebooting your computer/smartphone the go-to method for solving a problem with it?

Each program and process in a computer is constantly using memory space, registers, temp files, swap files, etc. You can think of all of these as a giant whiteboard where the program or process is continuously writing and erasing things that it needs to remember. When a program or process erases something, it may not get all the marks off the board. After awhile, the white board gets pretty messy and hard to read and that can cause problems. When a computer reboots one of the things it does during the start-up process is to thoroughly erase the whiteboard so it is ready to use. This will often fix a computer problem.

ELI5: If it's so difficult to cool things down in space, how do satellites and the ISS not overheat from sunlight?

Most surfaces are painted white or coated in reflective material to reduce absorption of sunlight. There may also be areas painted black that face away from the sun that radiate heat. White absorbs light/IR the least, but also radiates heat the least. Black absorbs the most, but radiates the most too. By using both in the right positions, the temperature can be controlled. Thermal management is basically all about moving heat to a part of the spacecraft designed to radiate heat to keep the craft cool.

ELI5: Why does it feel good to be clean?

Oils that occur naturally on your skin combine with dirt from the environment to create a layer covering your body. This layer changes the nature of tactile sensation you receive from the environment (eg, clothing, armpits, light breeze, etc.). Furthermore, this layer reduces your skin's ability to diffuse body heat by inhibiting sweat evaporation and radiant conduction.

What determines the speed of us thinking?

Basically in the title, what determines the speed at which we (our brains) process information and act?

What you ask in the title and the question are two different things. "Thinking" implies we are consciously aware of it - that it has reached our neocortex. That determines the speed at which we think. The more you've done something, the more efficient that neuronal pathway for that thinking occurs, increasing the speed at which you "think". The limiting factor of that speed, is the speed of an action potential (.31-.75milliseconds) times the amount of neurons needed to create that thought (an unknown variable). For reference, when you see a face, your brain detects you're seeing a face with an event related potential called the N170. 170ms in, your brain has detected a face. However, for you to consciously realize that, it may take a second (EDIT: this is an overestimation, significantly longer is more accurate, the actual number is closer to 400-600ms). Your brain has to put that "face" in context - basically the area that deals with faces (Fusiform face area among others) has to communicate with the neocortex and that takes the most time and is therefore the rate-limiting factor.

Is there a branch of academic philosophy that specifically includes the study of what makes a person believe in something?

If you mean "causes" at the level of precedent individual determinants, that's psychology. If you mean "causes" at the level of determinants in communicative interaction, that's rhetoric. If you mean "causes" at the level of precedent systemic determinants, that's sociology or anthropology or political science. Academic philosophy intersects with all of these, to varying degrees.

Why are fingerprints so elaborate and unique?

How did they develop and evolve to become so? Do they serve any particular evolutionary function in being as elaborate and varied as they are?

Friction ridges are used for grip and are present in several different types of animals. You can see them present on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet. There are hereditary traits that help with how friction ridges are created, but ultimately the uniqueness comes down to the random stresses that are present during fetal growth as the friction ridges develop.

ELI5: How are sociopaths able to have such magnetic personalities and appear likable when they have no empathy?

Isn't empathy neccissary in order to relate/connect with someone? I've hear sociopaths are excellent at getting people to like them initially. The two seem to contradict eachother.

They can pick and choose which traits to demonstrate. A typical person has conflicting emotions that influence how they interact with people. The fact that typical people can't "choose" which traits to show at different times means that they often show negative traits to people. A sociopath is able to look at which traits are favorable to other people, and because they lack empathy or the ability to mirror the emotions of others, they can choose exactly how they portray themselves.

Are there still good arguments for free will?

When reading physics and especially Einstein's relativity theory which seems to suggest that the past, the present and the future are actually all determined already, I cannot help but wonder: How do people who believe in free will defend their position? (I am undecided myself) Can free will be defended because the theory of relativity still does not match experiments in quantum physics, which provide hope for free will? Or what are the current arguments that allow us to sustain hope of free will (if any)? :-)

Hume has argued that free will is dependent on the definition of freedom. If our definition of freedom is to live your life according to our values, then we have free will. If our definition of freedom is to choose an action completely uncaused, then we do not have free will.

[The Walking Dead] Why fresh infected can't run?

I mean, they don't even seem to try and fall. Is there any reason why a person who died of a single bite in the arm can't run?

Bipedal walking is a complicated series of coordinated processes, running even more so. Walkers seem to only be operating at the barest minimum of brain power - they can barely stagger around, they probably don't have the cognitive ability and coordination to run.

CMV: Minimum Wage Should Be Set On A Local Basis- The Federal Minimum is Fine.

Quite often, I'll see liberals advocating for a $15/hour federal minimum wage. Now, I understand these demands. There are many people struggling to support themselves on minimum wage, and they feel this is what's needed at a bare minimum. However, the cost of living varies heavily by location. For example, the cost of living in New York City is significantly higher than living in some rural town in Kentucky. While someone may need to earn $15 an hour to support themselves in certain areas, in other areas it's practically overkill. **Cons of A $15 Federal Minimum Wage:** -**Discourages businesses from spreading out.** if minimum wage is roughly the same everywhere, then business have little reason to locate themselves in less crowded areas. In fact, they're more likely to want to locate in the city, as that reduces the cost of travel for things like consulting, contract workers, etc. However, if minimum wage was $10 in some rural town, but $15 in a crowded city, they may choose to base operations in the rural town, because it cuts overhead costs. This creates more jobs and opportunities in the rural town, and helps fight congestion in the crowded city. -**It's not feasible for small businesses** A convenience store/fast food restaurant in a crowded city is likely to see more activity than one in the middle of nowhere. Therefore, it's easier to pay $15 an hour to employees working in Chicago than one working in some small town, because of more money coming in. -**Discourages people from pursuing further education** College education is expensive, and it often requires loans. At $15 an hour, many people might be making almost as much as a college graduate in some fields. From a purely objective standpoint, it may become a bad decision to pursue a college education, because of opportunity cost reasons: -By going to college, 4(or more) years that could be spent working are spent learning. -You accrue a lot of debt in student loans if you can't afford it upfront, and have to pay it off later. Assuming college costs $30,000 a year for 4 years, that's $120,000. Lost. Working at $15/hour 40 days a week, that's ~$30,000 a year. So by going to college for 4 years, you're down $240,000. However, it gets worse due to the *time value of money*. Those loans generate interest, and grow even bigger. Additionally, with the money you could have made working, you could invest a portion, making even more. As a result of an increased federal minimum wage, we would see a reduced amount of people pursuing further education, which isn't good for our economy that is increasingly moving away from basic labor(thanks to automation), and requiring more and more creativity and design. By raising the minimum wage at the federal level, it will likely have severe effects on the economy by restricting the free market, damage the job market by causing certain locations to be overcrowded with businesses, and have a severe impact on the incentive to pursue skilled careers. Setting the minimum wage at a local level is far more effective, as it's much better tuned to the cost of living, and helps create jobs in areas that aren't as crowded, better spreading the population.

The federal minimum wage should be set at the average livable wage level for the country (which would be around $10). From there each State, County, and City should set minimum wages in their jurisdictions that meet the livable wage level for that region (which they currently have the authority to do and often do use that authority). To paraphrase FDR when he first established the minimum wage, "If a business is unable to pay a living wage it does not deserve to exist in this country". So if raising the minimum wage hurts some businesses and the free market, good. They are bad businesses that should not have existed in the first place if they cannot pay their employees well.

What would happen if a fully vaccinated individual were to contract coronavirus? Would it just feel like a light cold for them or would they literally not get sick at all?

The purpose of a vaccine is to prepare the adaptive immune system for an invasion by a pathogen, so that when it arrives it is immediately recognized and destroyed. Symptoms are a result of tissue damage when pathogens destroy host cells far beyond initial invasion. If you receive a low load long enough after you have been vaccinated you should experience nothing. A high load or frequent exposures will saturate your immunity and take effect to the extent that such a load would had you not been vaccinated. If you are exposed within a short window after one of your vaccinations, your adaptive immune system will be saturated and you will likely be more sick than you would have been had you not gotten the jab. Hope this clears things up.

CMV: Everyone has a right to refuse physical contact and no one should be able to discriminate against you for doing so.

I was reading through [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/8dn2kb/muslim_woman_who_refused_handshake_denied_french/?st=JG83T6D2&sh=224664ca) and I was completely baffled at the comments. A woman was denied citizenship to a country because she refused to shake hands with an officials and a lot of people are saying “well if she doesn’t share the same views she didn’t deserve to be in this country” But how is the fact the she just doesn’t want to come into physical contact with a male ‘not sharing the same values?’ As far as I know the religion doesn’t promote hate between sexes. I had muslims friends in high school who would be like that. Like not really shaking hands or hugs with guys because that’s just what they practice. And I’m like “hey that’s cool, no big deal if you don’t want a hug or a handshake”. Like even if a white girl, or Asian dude, or anyone said that they don’t like being touched or giving people hugs. That’s like saying “oh hey [African American girl] you’re not comfortable with coming into physical contact with guys? That’s cool. Maybe she was abused. Maybe she had a bad experience with guys and doesn’t trust them. Whatever her reason is it’s none of my business and I can respect the fact the she doesn’t wanna be touched.” And then saying,”[Muslim Girl], you don’t like coming into contact with guys? But it’s because of your religion? Oh hell no that makes you dirty muzzy that shouldn’t be allowed here.” Furthermore, I feel like if a country is letting people into their land both the native population and immigrants coming in have to be at-least slightly understanding that both sides might be exposed to some new customs and it’ll take some time to adapt. Whole reason these people are fleeing to other countries is because of conflict and their lives are in danger. They’re not coming with the sole purpose of trying to destroy established cultural norms. They don’t know any better. Which I understand brings up the fair point that their might be a conflict with these two cultures that have never interacted. And do believe it is the immigrants job to try and assimilate to a degree that abides to the laws of the land in which they are seeking refuge. Which finally brings me to to say: refusing physical contact with whoever she wishes does not break any law of that country, and she should not be discriminated against for it. Everyone has a right to refuse physical contact and no one should be able to discriminate against you for doing so. Change my view. And maybe my view is really naive but I was really confused so I’m just trying to here some other view points. Lastly, let me know if anything is unclear, my English and language education stopped in 6th grade because I stopped paying attention. I honestly have no idea how I made it to college. Edit: I have changed my mind. Do I award deltas to people who made a same or similar points to the person who changed my mind or only the first person who changed my mind ?

Under French law, one condition for citizenship is integrating with the French culture. To be clear, this woman is not a refugee, she's been married to a Frenchman for years. She knows about French culture, and has chosen not to integrate with it. I understand that she has been living there as a resident foreign national for a long time, and her right of residence has not been revoked and is not in jeopardy. She can go on living there, but by French law she does not meet the requirements for being French. Note that this is not a matter of the refusal of physical contact, it's the refusal of the French culture. From all I've read, the French authorities would have been fine with handing over her citizenship papers without shaking her hand if the reason she cited was, for instance, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or a hand injury, or even not having a right hand. She was applying for the privilege of becoming French, but insisted on changing the ceremony because of issues relating to non-French culture. The authorities declined to make those changes for her.

ELI5: How could we have had so accurate world-maps before we could fly/see the world from space?

For example in the 1700's we already had very accurate world maps.

Surveying. Surveyors took records of how far they travelled, how far between landmarks, the angles between landmarks from their positions, and so forth and so on, creating a network of measured triangles. This allowed the creation of accurate maps.

[Marvel] Does SHIELD openly recruit mutants?

As an 18-year-old young mutant who is trying to come to terms with my power to turn my arms into an organic laser cannons, I find myself looking at the impossibly crazy world I live in world and wanting to use my powers to do some good. I see all those SHIELD recruitment posters all over Manhattan, but I am wondering if they would accept me if I walked into a recruitment office? One would think that being able to spontaneously create high power laser cannons would make one uniquely qualified for an intelligence/peacekeeping agency. I could even see SHIELD having their own mutant training program, which I feel would be a lot more effective for my growth as a mutant than blasting soda bottles in my room.

You could write up an application and include your powers on it, but they will more likely look for military experience. Honestly, what you aught to do is learn to be a person first and a mutant second. Live your life, learn what you love to do. If it turns out what you love to do is serve in the military, then by all means be all you can be. But don't let your power define you. One mutant to another.

Eli5: How does Bamboo grow so quickly and why?

I’ve heard stories about being able to watch Bamboo grow, but how does it grow so quickly and why?

Plants need sunlight to create energy. The process of photosynthesis turns sunlight into sugar and that sugar fuels the energy the plants lives off. The stuff a plant takes from the soil doesn't provide it with energy but it does provide it with building blocks to grow. That's why plants grow upwards. They absorb building blocks from the soil using their roots. And then they grow bigger to catch more sunlight and taller to try and outcompete the plants around them. After all, it's better to catch sunlight and throw shade than it is to be in someone else's shade. Bamboo tends to grow in dense forests there is not a lot of sunlight that reaches the forest floor. So bamboo evolved to put all of its efforts into growing tall as fast as possible to break through the undergrowth and get to that sunlight. It's also why bamboo grows in thin tall poles. It wastes no energy growing thick, it puts all its effort into growing tall.

CMV: Gun control is worse than pointless since most criminals don't acquire their guns through legal channels anyway

I should preface this by saying I'm not a member of any gung-ho gun owners group, and while I do have opinions on what the constitution/amendments recognize as rights or freedoms I'm not interested in that sort of a discussion here. I simply think that until we can guarantee that criminals will only acquire their guns through the same channels law-abiding citizens do, placing restrictions on what firearms which citizens can legally purchase only hinders the general public's ability to protect itself. I do see two obvious counters to my viewpoint: * There are certain individuals who are not criminals yet that if allowed to own a gun would quickly become one (mentally ill, etc). I see the merit in this argument even though I'm not sure I agree with the principle behind it. * Police should be the ones doing the protecting and not citizens themselves i.e. the "we're not in a warzone" argument. I saw an interesting reddit post relating that to owning a fire extinguisher just in case a fire breaks out in your house. That kind of sums up my thoughts on that. I assume there are very intelligent people on both sides of the fence here. Can anyone help me understand the other side? _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

Gun control measures (if effective) make guns less common overall, which raises their price in the black market. Criminals are generally not very rich as a rule, and so raising the street price of a handgun from in the hundreds of dollars to in the thousands of dollars will make it harder for criminals to acquire them, even if they don't care about the law.

CMV: Inclusionary Zoning is does not make median housing more affordable

Inclusionary zoning is a policy where when new condo or purpose built rental developments are created, a percentage of the units must be reserved as "affordable units". At least in my home city of Toronto, [this percentage has been specified as 5-10%](https://www.toronto.ca/news/city-of-toronto-advances-the-new-inclusionary-zoning-policy-to-facilitate-the-creation-of-affordable-housing/) of new units. It is my belief that due to the need for profit-driven developers to maintain a profit margin, inclusionary zoning policies only inflate the cost of the market rate units in the building. This ends up pushing up the cost of housing for those purchasing or renting those units, and ends up being a "tax" on the middle class. Worst off, these costs are borne by those currently without housing, who are typically less wealthy. Those who already own their own homes already have secured housing, and thus they don't have to face the consequences of inclusionary zoning. So to sum up my view: Inclusionary zoning does nothing to increase affordability for the median resident, and only increases affordability for the less fortunate who win the "lottery" of securing one of the affordable units, while making other new entrants to the market pay a premium to subsidize the affordable units.

How can developers inflate the "market" rate of market rate units. That is set by market conditions ie. supply and demand. Regardless of whether or not an apartment is 100 market rate units or 20 affordable units and 80 market rate units, the company will sell the market unit rate at the most profitable price to them, which is the highest price they can sell all their units (to simplify). To put it another way, **without affordable housing, companies would "inflate" the price to to the point of maximum profit anyway**. Why would they leave money on the table? therefore, forcing them to have affordable units can't drive up the price more, because they would have done it anyway.

CMV: School Children should have a Class Mandatorily exposing Them to Nature

It is part of my view that nature is an integral part to the well-being of a human. There are no cities in the world that do not have any greenery present in their boundaries, as city planners know how important nature is to the welfare of an individual. However, living in a city with greenery does not obligate people to take advantage of that fact. A stressed New Yorker may not have the time to go to Central Park or the many botanical gardens present in its boroughs, but we can still say with certainty they are exposed to nature at some point in their life. This view mainly focuses on the economically-disadvantaged. Yes, a child in Manhattan will be able to go to the “wilderness” of Central Park, but a child in the Bronx might not be as privileged, and will most likely not be able to experience the grounds of the New York Botanical Garden. An inherent respect of the natural world can only be provided if one can experience nature. If a person is not able to go out into nature, they are also not garnering a respect for it. A person in a city might grow up without having respect for nature. As climate change looms over the horizon, we need our children to learn how to care for nature. It is easy to remove an individual’s sense of obligation from the world if they aren’t surrounded by it, or artificially removed from it. What is the difference between that concept and nature? A class exposing children to different wildlife in their area or even plants would remediate this situation. The only foreseeable issue is funding, but that shouldn’t change the fact that children should have an unalienable right to enjoy nature. If we look at people who destroy the environment with no regard for what they’re doing, potentially this idea of respect implanted as child would remove their apathy of a world they’re killing. A CEO who only cares about profit and not the wildlife they’re killing off with pollution, would maybe instead resort to different policies about the environment if they cared that they’re killing foxes that saw scampering around as children. I believe that my perspective has been melded by living in an area where nature is readily-available and abundant, and also having been exposed to the works of transcendentalists such as Thoreau and Emerson who argued some of the same concepts I express. Change my view!

1. Recess already exists. Outside play after lunch already exists. Just create a park in the school yard. 2. There already isn't enough time to fit in many important academic subjects (e.g., art, music, computer programming, languages) 3. Kids don't need to be forced to go into nature, they do so voluntarily. 4. There doesn't have to be a class. There can just be field trips to parks. 5. There are lots of after school groups and clubs that do this. 6. Parents regularly take kids to parks as children. 7. Classes like biology, physics, chemistry, etc. expose kids to the laws of nature. Nature isn't just greenery and trees. Everything is part of nature, and learning about nature from those perspective is arguably more important than just walking around outside.

Why do mosquitoes bite some people, but not others?

I’m just curious is it the type of blood some people or their scent? My mom and I both have always gotten bitten every time we leave the house living in Florida and my dad only gets bit maybe once a year, If that.

Two main reasons: 1. Taller people tend to attract more mosquitoes since they exhale more CO2 and mosquitoes use CO2 to locate their target. 2. The bacteria on the surface of your skin give a certain “odor” that can be attractive or repulsive to mosquitos. This can cause some people to attract more mosquitoes becuase they “smell better” to them and vice versa.

CMV: The pledge of allegience and other rituals of national identity are holding society back.

Nationalism in general is harmful distinction amongst people serving only to encourage people to believe that (not necessarily even) the country they were born makes them more important / better than others from different countires. This further highlights physical and cultural differences keeping race, creed and skin colour at the forefront of discrimination. Your land mass of preference is nothing more than a matter of circumstance and the nationals of your country are just as much of a burden on the planet as the foreigners these rituals imply are second rate. Edit: This has necessarily expanded into a discussion on - Social economics - Patriotism vs nationalism In terms of economics: Please assume any reference to this is intended to express public (and occasionally at a push, social) benefits. The reasoning for doing so is to hopefully highlight how national identity can be a) relative to your perceptions of "lesser countries". b) a productive of abusing of nations / collections of nations. e.g, DDT ban once the rest of the world no longer needed America for its production. _____ > *Hello, users of CMV! This is a footnote from your moderators. We'd just like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please remember to* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! If you are thinking about submitting a CMV yourself, please have a look through our* ***[popular topics wiki](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/populartopics)*** *first. Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

1) The view in your title and the view you defend are different. 2) Holding society back from what? Assertions that something is holding us back generally rely on a usually false notion that there is an objective spectrum between progress and regression. We are moving forward in time, so what progress in what field are we failing to make and why is the present course not a form of progress? 3) States arguably exist for the mutual benefit of their citizens and function by pulling together their resources to perform shared tasks. Why is it *inherently* wrong to develop a sense of pride in such an organization; which in turn leads to emotional investment, dedication and a higher probability of success in shared tasks? Democracies especially require the enthusiastic participation of citizens to function properly, and they are more likely to offer that participation if they have a personal stake in the country.

What guides actions or decisions in moral error theory?

If anything is neither right nor wrong, then why should one action be chosen over the other? Error theory seems pretty plausible but also very destructive because of this. Is there just nothing that guides towards an action? In a decision if there's multiple options, none of which right or wrong, then what makes the deciding factor? Can a decision be made?

The vast majority of moral error theorists believe that there are normative facts, and so they think that what counts in favor of doing one thing or another is that we have reason to do one this or another. And when we have the most reason to do one thing rather than another thing, we ought to do that thing, or are obligated by practical rationality to do that thing.

ELI5: The "Old Math" in Tom Lehrer's New Math

If you haven't heard the song, he describes the way they used to do math as follows: >Consider the following subtraction problem, which I will put up here: 342 minus 173. Now, remember how we used to do that: >Three from two is nine, carry the one, and if you're under 35 or went to a private school, you say seven from three is six, but if you're over 35 and went to a public school, you say eight from four is six ...and carry the one, so we have 169. He then proceeds to the song, which explains regrouping, the way I learned to do math growing up in the 90s. How did they teach it before?

Before regrouping, arithmetic was taught as a mechanical procedure to follow and practice religiously, without any regard to why it works. 3 4 2 -1 7 3 ------- When subtracting a larger number from a smaller number, you'd pretend there's an extra 1 before the larger number, so 2 - 3 becomes 12 - 3. Then after writing down 9, you'd "carry" that extra 1 to the next line. Then you can either subtract one from the top number, or add one to the lower number - they're equivalent, and continue. It's pretty much exactly the same as regrouping, but the idea of "carry the 1" doesn't really give you any insight into how it works.

ELI5: If your heart has roughly 1 billion beats before natural failure, why is cardio exersize good for you?

Is it the same principle behind other muscles? Working them out makes them stronger?

Two reasons. - Cardio doesn't just exercise your heart. It exercises your lungs and your muscles associated with endurance. This helps your body a LOT, doing things like assisting your metabolism to keep your weight down, adding to your bone density from the impacts, lowering your blood pressure, and increasing your stability so you won't fall and break a hip. - And your heart has *roughly* a billion beats, there's no ticking countdown clock. Some people get way more, some people get way less. It's more of a rough general observation than any sort of limiting estimate or warranty period. P.S. fit people have lower beats per minute than unfit people, offsetting the extra heartbeats that occur when they exercise anyway. *LATE EDIT: A lot of people have already pointed out that the average lifespan of a human means closer to 3 billion beats. Just pushing that up to the top for accuracy.*

ELI5: Why do things always look farther away on a camera?

It basically all depends on the lens you're using. Most cameras that we use, such as those on cell phones, have a relatively wide field of view. The wider your lens, the further away the subject will appear. The opposite is also true, where a much less wide angle lens, or a telephoto, will make the subject appear closer to the photographer. Source: am photographer

How does host selection work for different species of parasitic wasps?

There are thousands of species of parasitic wasps, and they have a diverse range of hosts for which they lay their eggs in, such as caterpillars, spiders, aphids, etc. However, could, for instance, a tarantula hawk wasp be able to lay eggs in a caterpillar, and just prefers targeting spiders, or can it only lay eggs in spiders? Same question applies for other types of parasitic wasps.

Hi! Parasitoids tend to be very specific to their hosts (even if they attack different species within a family) as they need to overcome the defense mechanisms that the host has to defend themselves from the parasitoid. Some caterpillars create melatonin bubbles around wasps eggs, others have white globules that attack the unknown element inside their bodies, and some wasps use different mechanisms such as venom, paralyzers or even polydnaviruses that hits the host’s immune system and lowers the capacity of the host to attack the wasp egg. Evolutionarily speaking knowing what are the defense mechanisms of each host is very costly, and they tend to specialize to be as effective as they can, after all, their lives depends on it. Because of this it’s not very common for a parasitoid to attack a great range of hosts, for that we have predators which are VERY generalists 😈

ELI5: What triggers a seed to start growing?

Obviously water, sunlight, and soil conditions are the macro-triggers, if you will. But what happens inside the seed to get things moving?

Seeds wait to germinate until three needs are met: water, correct temperature (warmth), and a good location (such as in soil). During its early stages of growth, the seedling relies upon the food supplies stored with it in the seed until it is large enough for its own leaves to begin making food through photosynthesis.

[Star Wars] I'm a Star Destroyer captain that wants to desert to the rebellion, what do I do?

I've grown tired of the atrocities the Empire does and I want to help out the rebellion with this kick-ass Star Destroyer. I have most of the officers on my side and about half of the crew. Can I make it?

What you want to do is: • Get a small group of like minded senior officers • Kill the political officer and make it look like an accident • Fake a reactor accident and get the rest of the crew to abandon ship • Fake the destruction of the star destroyer • Take the Star Destroyer to the rebellion Bonus points if, at some point, the crew sings the imperial anthem More bonus points if a Rebel intelligence officer tracks you down and helps achieve your goal to defect.

ELI5: Why do bodybuilding supplement shops sell Ben and Jerry's ice cream?

I've seen Ben & Jerry's being referenced regarding body-building and working out all over the internet too, such as fitness forums and even /fit/ on 4chan. I then saw it for sale at a local body-building supps shop; the kind of place to sell protein powder. I think the ice cream is delicious, but it must be horribly unhealthy. With the amount of sugar and fat that must go into those tubs, especially with flavours such as "cookie dough", how on earth can the fattiest, sweetest ice-cream on the market be constructive towards a healthy diet?

If you've got a heavy exercise regimen, it's easy to introduce some extra calories into your diet without any problems. Bodybuilders and serious athletes can struggle to eat enough calories. The idea that sugar and fat are bad for you holds if you're an average Joe with a desk job. When you're 250 pounds of muscle and working out daily, you've got different rules.

Teaching-only positions at colleges

I really love math and I would like to teach at college level. I'm not as keen on research though. I have a few questions. 1. Are teaching-only positions hard to come by? What are the opportunities like, especially for a foreigner? 2. What are the requirements? Would I have to get a phd? 3. What is the pay like? I would be happy to receive tips and advice from everyone. Thank you :)

Community colleges are teaching-only positions, and for math they're pretty easy to come by, but fairly competetive. In most states, a master's is the minimum requirement, but a phd is helpful. The pay is alright; it's enough to have a decent middle-class lifestyle.

Where Should I Start with Philosophy of Art?

Hi, everyone. So, I’ve always been intrigued by what Art and aesthetics “are”. I remember from my Philosophy class (back in High School) that there is a branch of Philosophy that approaches the previous themes - I also remember my teacher saying that it is quite of a neglected area. Now that I have all the time in the World, I’d like to invest some time and attention to that. In your opinion, which works are better to start this journey (and why, if you’d like to elaborate)? Thank you all for your help. :)

This is a very broad question so I'll have to give a broad answer: get *Aesthetics: A Comprehensive Anthology* (by Cahn and Meskin) which is a 700-page doorstopper on the topic, but if you finish it, you'll be acquainted with the most important thinkers and movements. It's also a collection of primary texts but with very good introductions to each time period or thinker, so it's easy to follow along. I guess you're looking for singular names of authors however, so I'll just say: Schopenhauer.

ELI5: Why we use chip readers.

Chip readers seem a lot slower to work, and the swipe method really doesnt have anything significantly wrong about it.

The magnetic stripes on the back of payment cards are easy to read and easy to program, making them extremely easy to clone. An attacker only needs about 2 seconds with your card to read the data off the mag stripe, which can then be programmed on to a card of theirs and they can make payments with your (cloned) card. Chip and PIN introduces a few new factors. Not only is it extremely difficult to clone a chip, but you also need a PIN code to authorise the transaction. It makes it a hell of a lot harder for an attacker to fraudulently clone cards, and as long as the majority of banks issue chip cards and the majority of merchants have chip and PIN readers, fraud levels go down. EDIT: Never even considered that OP could be in the US, and apparently there is no PIN associated with chip payments in the US. The same thing stands about it being harder to clone though.

ELI5: Why is being Jewish considered an ethnicity?

It is considered an ethnicity because the development of the Jewish religion occurred among a specific group of people, and so as the religion grew, so did the ethnicity associated with the religion. The Jewish ethnicity is defined, therefore, partially by ancestry and partially by religion. The Jewish community also stayed closed off to matches not within the community, preserving their ethnical integrity. That is, until the modern day, where one can be an ethnic Jew, a religious Jew, or both.

ELI5: How does lead exposure lead to mental health problems in children and why is it hard to remove from the bloodstream?

I was reading an article about lead poisoning in children and it has me wondering how lead exposure damages your brain. From a quick search it seems like it can cause obsessive compulsive tendencies, and sensory problems. Do we have an answer as to why this happens?

Lead can substitute itself for many of the other metal ions that are useful in the body, without actually being useful itself. This includes iron in blood cells, and calcium which helps it to pass into the brain. It also binds with many enzymes, which are responsible for many of the bodies functions, and makes them less useful or completely stops them from working. It also directly interacts with cells and proteins, producing "free radicals" which damage DNA in a similar way to radiation or ultraviolet light. In the brain and nervous system, through a mixture of the above mechanisms, it both damages the formation of neurons, inhibits or slows down the work of neurons, and interferes with neurotransmitters. All of this has a general effect of damaging and inhibiting the brains function. It stays in the blood and soft tissues for a relatively brief amount of time, days to weeks, but it binds very strongly with bone (and can sometimes be visible on xrays as a result of this), where it is harmless, but is then very slowly released back into the blood over years to decades, causing ongoing problems. Children are more sensitive to the effects of lead because their brains are still developing, so inhibiting neurons formation has a much bigger overall effect, compared to a fully developed brain where the majority of neuron formation is complete. It also circulates in the blood more easily, with less lead being bound to bone, so exposure to smaller amounts can have a more potent effects.

[Terminator] What makes the 800 series of Terminators so effective at defeating more advanced models?

Sometimes, certain types of technology progress to a point where they are so effective at doing the tasks they are designed to do that the marginal return on any enhancement starts to quickly diminish. Take the internal combustion engine. If you take a close look at the engine block of a brand new vehicle and compare it to a similar type of engine block from 30 years ago, you'll find that they are going to look and perform almost the same. In general, the T-800 series was so effective at doing everything it was needed to do that it was able to hold its own against the T-1000 and T-X models. I think the key was that both the T-1000 and the T-X still "fought" like the T-800 as if they had not yet developed the software to fully utilities their more advanced chassis and weaponry. This is especially true with the T-1000. In T2, the T-1000 should have easy taken out the T-800 by forming a blade and stabbing it through the the chest like it did later in the movie with an ordinary pipe. It didn't because it still seems to approach combat with the two arms and two legs paradigm that the T-800 uses.

How bright would a single light have to be to be visible from the moon?

Specifically lights that shine in a cone such that they could be pointed at the moon and be visible from anywhere facing the earth, as opposed to lasers which would only be visible from a small area Also assuming the area the light is shone from is in night and free from external light pollution

Are you asking about: 1. Shining a light from earth to the moon and seeing it standing on the moon? 2. Shining a light from the moon to the earth and seeing it standing on Earth? 3. Shining a light from the earth to the moon and seeing it standing on Earth? (Lighting up the moon)?

[General Fantasy] Many Fantasy settings are specifically in "Medieval Stasis," are there any examples of settings in "Bronze Age Stasis," "Antiquities Stasis," "Dark Ages," or other?

Like the [trope](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalStasis) implies, it's a setting that has gone *thousands* of years with little to no innovation or change at all. But so many Fantasy settings seem to be in a specifically quasi-Medieval setting, are there others where other epochs are widely evident? I'm sure they exist but I can only really think of maybe some of the Ghiscari/Valyrian descended cities seem to have some elements of Antiquities (Ghiscari seem like a Phoenician/Punic inspired people) and a smattering of other elements.

Here's some examples. Islamic Golden Age Stasis * "Ramadan" by Neil Gaiman Pre-Industrial Revolution Stasis * *Mistborn* * *Book of the New Sun*(?) Modern Stasis * *The Matrix* Spacefaring Stasis * outer planets in *Firefly* * Earth in *Old Man's War* * *Mass Effect* (more like a cap on development than stasis, via Reapers) * *Star Wars* * *Dune* * *Hyperion*

CMV: Universities should have professors dedicated to teaching only

It seems more and more frequently students are struggling with professors teaching poorly despite ever increasing tuition costs, the pandemic and online learning has only emphasized this. It would make sense to me for universities to hire professors that only teach and do not have other responsibilities such as research etc. This would allow them to focus solely on teaching, providing the best learning experience for their students. Additionally they can have an increased amount of office hours. This may also mean that they can teach multiple classes so students become used to them and they can relate various classes together (if applicable). Especially for undergrad, you may not even require professors and instead use lecturers (those without doctorates) to teach as the course information is usually not on the cutting edge of the subject and instead is well-planted in history and well known (for example calculus). As an engineering student, I've had some good profs, one excellent out of this world amazing prof and a bunch that were difficult to learn from. It seems I am not alone in these appraisals. Thoughts?

Sounds like what you want is to attend a community college. What attracts people to programs at university is the prospect of working with researchers in their field of choice. And there just isn't enough work/money to give a very specialized professor ONLY responsibilities of teaching his/her own specialty and research. So each specialist also takes some general classes to help justify their role/salary at the university, since their specialist classes may just be a handful of students. So the current University approach: * Makes sure the university has as many different researchers as it can afford to * Gives the researchers a better work environment because of the plentiful amount of potential collaborators both in their discipline and across disciplines * Supports an important University mission which is to push research forward * Exposes younger students to these researchers * Gives their students the widest range of options in terms of specializations Your system would not allow the university to afford a larger staff. You'd be replacing specialized researchers with non-researchers. This is a drag on several important goals of the university from pushing forward research to attracting new students with their researchers.

ELI5 the difference between sentience and sapience, please

Sentience is the ability to feel, the capacity for perception, derived from Latin *sentientem*, "a feeling". It is a base-level aspect of consciousness (as simple as being able to understand your surroundings). Sapience is the ability to think, the capacity for intelligence, derived from Latin *sapientia*, "wisdom". It is basically what we call "wisdom", like the ability to learn and have judgment. A rock is not sentient, for it cannot feel, but even an ant is sentient as it can perceive its surroundings. But an ant acts, in many ways, purely on instinct and built-in pathways, so it would not be described as sapient, whereas a human being can choose to act in a variety of ways based on what it has learned and what the situation is.

CMV: A minimum wage increase will do no good for the economy.

(Just a note before I get into it. I am in no way an expert on economics. I hold only a basic understanding of the economy, that which was provided via public schooling.) I live in Canada and increases to the minimum wage have been discussed for years now. A few years ago, our provincial government had announced a plan to slowly increase the minimum wage, year by year. This has sparked controversy throughout my local communities. The way I see it is, the more you have to pay your employees, the less product or services you will be able to provide and maintain the same profits. Which may cause many local businesses to have to close up shop, due to stiff competition from big box stores. I feel it may cause less investment in our local economy, and more funds moving out of the country. Another note, I currently work in a low paying job. I got hired at a few dollars more than the minimum due to my past experience. The minimum wage went up as scheduled and then I was getting paid the same as some of the new guys who knew nothing about the job. (I used past tense because I got promoted to a higher position recently.) We had a bunch of people all ask for raises because they felt they were more valuable based off of experience. I feel like that would ripple up the chain until everyone was sitting at the same wage, respective to the positions below them. Pairing that with raising the cost of goods and services to keep people on the payroll, I just struggle to see the benefit of raising the minimum wage. Most people in my social circle agree with me, but people on the internet (Reddit especially) seem to think otherwise. I'm interested to see some evidence that this plan will work. _____ > *This is a footnote from the CMV moderators. We'd like to remind you of a couple of things. Firstly, please* ***[read through our rules](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/rules)***. *If you see a comment that has broken one, it is more effective to report it than downvote it. Speaking of which,* ***[downvotes don't change views](http://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/guidelines#wiki_upvoting.2Fdownvoting)****! Any questions or concerns? Feel free to* ***[message us](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/changemyview)***. *Happy CMVing!*

Big box stores are already applying pressure to small businesses. What evidence is there that this would increase with a higher minimum wage? Or, let's look at it from the reverse perspective. If you believe that an increase in the minimum wage would make it harder for small businesses to compete with large corporations, then presumably lowering the minimum wage would benefit local businesses? If Ontario decided that we should lower the minimum wage to $5 an hour, do you think that the economy would improve? Are Wal-Mart and McDonald's applauding the increase in the minimum wage? (Assuming that you are correct, they should be, because it will benefit them, right?) Right now, people who get paid minimum wage have very little money left over after paying for their basic expenses (housing, food, transportation). Possibly, they have no money left over, and possibly they need to skimp on the basic necessities to end up at zero. If we increase their wages by 30%, they now have a lot more disposable income, and they will spend a lot more money locally, which is great for the economy. The main objection is that living expenses will increase, because business costs will have increased. While true, there is no way that living expenses will increase by 30%. (Unless you belive that employee wages account for all of a business's expenses. If they have to increase their wages by 30%, they do not need to increase their prices by 30% to make up the difference. The needed increase would be much lower). Also, if working at minimum wage means failing to achieve a reasonable standard of living, it means that businesses that pay minimum wage are benefitting from the suffering of the employees. A business that cannot succeed financially without paying it's staff a living wage is not a business that should exist.

What do people mean by meaning (of life)?

For example, someone might say "meaning is constructed" or "there is no inherit meaning in the universe". But what do they mean? What is "meaning"?

When something has meaning, it points to something else. Words have meaning. The word "water" points to liquid substance. Usually, when people say that their life has meaning, they want to say there is something for them to achieve which is beyond their life. There are multiple perspectives on this. Theists believe that every individual exists for a very specific reason, that we are created in order to fulfill God's plan. Sometimes happens that a such person is unable to find their designated purpose, which is depressing - that may make them feel they are worthless, because they are unable to carry on the plan. Existentialists believe that we are each responsible for creating purpose or meaning in our own lives. Hence, there is no inherent meaning in our existence, but we are capable to make a projection of a goal that is to be fulfilled at some time in the future, and therefore direct our everyday actions towards that. Both these views share a common attribute: they say that the point of life will come later, if we discover and work for it. Hence life has meaning, ie it points to something else in the future. Nihilism says that the life is meaningless and it is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. Then there is another view which appears to be similar to the nihilistic view, but not in a negative way. It says that lives do not have meaning in the sense that the point of it is not in the future but in the present, in other words the meaning of life is just to be alive. For example, we might say that dancing is meaningless because you do not dance in order to get to a particular point on the floor, but despite that it is a very enjoyable activity. So some people think life is like dancing - pointless but enjoyable activity.

ELI5: In movie credits, why are some names coupled with the word "and" while others get ampersands?

[Topical visual example.](http://i.imgur.com/pvb0bpu.png) Why are the first two names joined by an ampersand but the word **AND** separates the other names? Why wouldn't it be one or the other the whole way through the credits?

Usually, ampersands are intended to join two things that worked as one unit; the word "and" is to join units. In your example, the team of Justin Theroux and Ben Stiller worked with Nick Stoller and John Hamburg to write the movie.

ELI5: How do people who speak Asian languages such as Chinese or Japanese explain how to spell words?

In Western languages we have letters that build into words, however in most Asian dialects there doesn't seem to be letters. So if someone from China didn't know how to spell a word, how would his friend explain how to spell that word or symbol?

Aside from kanji, the the japanese written language (hiragana & katakana) is phonetic just like the western alphabet. In fact, it's even more phonetic then English, considering that many English words aren't pronounced via their letters, but historical roots of the word.

ELI5: How are wild and sometimes dangerous animals in documentaries filmed so close and at so many different angles without noticing the camera operator?

lots of different ways of doing. 1. So really long lenses is one reason - the photographers are not near the animals and can zoom in close. They can also utilise hides (Like camouflaged huts) or ghilli suits or whatever. 2. Camera traps are another method - just hide cameras everywhere and only have them activate when there’s movement, don’t need a camera man stakes out for days then. 3. Oddly enough, befriending the animals is also an option. Planet Earth II had the film crew integrate into a troop of monkeys. 4. Shooting animals in captivity is also an option - portions of Blue Planet were shot in a aquarium. 5. This is perhaps the most surprising one - it’s not real! All the different shots of animals at different angles telling a vivid story of fight and flight - is very very often the animal on different days edited in such a way to tell a good story (not even always the same animal) and capture all of the behaviours that need to be showcased. So if there’s a lot of cuts in a wildlife sequence theres a pretty good chance it’s not all shot at the same time.

If something bleaches, where does the colour go?

When something gets bleached, where does the colour go? For example plastic toys or printed posters that lose their colour when exposed to the sun, as well as chemical bleached things such as hair or fabrics.

In brief, colour in things like toys, printed objects, hair, etc. comes from molecules that have particular bonding patterns that result in their absorbing certain wavelengths of light. We perceive this as colour. When those objects are "bleached", those molecules get destroyed (or at least rearranged) so that the bonding patterns responsible for the colour are no longer present.

ELI5: How do airfare search engines work? They make no sense to me.

Sitting here booking a flight. Finding a Lufthansa flight, but it's apparently much cheaper through the United website. Finding a multi-city flight on Google Flights, but other search engines will find you completely different flights, and completely different prices for those same flights. How tf do this market, these engines, and this pricing work? Extremely confusing, and seems to have gotten worse over time.

Airlines will vary there prices on tickets day-by-day The same ticket will cost a different price depending on how full the airplane is, the day, and various other factors including which carrier is reselling the ticket. They also track you with Cookies, so if you keep going to the same site over and over again they'll sometimes increase the cost of the ticket with each visit to encourage people to buy immediately. The search engine checks all these different sites and pulls the ticket info for you in one place, it's kind cheating the system but in a lot of ways the Airlines don't care so long as it sells a seat. The same goes for websites that look for cheap hotel rooms

Beginner readings on how individualism and the concept of self is informed and nurtured by capitalism?

Been quite interested in this lately. Personally I've been torn between being a cog in the machine and following the rule book of work to afford a happiness and peace outside of work, and realizing that my whole narrative of self/selfhood and the process self-actualization are actually indoctrinates that serve the capitalist system. Also interested in the intersection between self help and capitalism - stuff like how 7 Habits really makes an effective worker in the system. I'm torn between the freedom and lightness I have been finding through pursuits of meditation, non-attachment to self, fostering a healthier relationship with my ego and de-subscribing to a lot of the stories I have written about my life and myself and the idea of letting go of my individuality, self-hood and agency/capacity for growth while embracing acceptance of things as they are. Does anyone have any leads for any readings or philosophers I should look into to follow this path? I'm very beginner in philosophy and have difficulty retaining the headier reads but I am hoping to get there in due time!

It's worth reading Bell's *The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism* to understand a highly influential framing of this issue, and Taylor's *Sources of the Self* and *Modern Social Imaginaries* for a take on these kinds of developments from a very different perspective.

[Marvel] Why do people use the term "healing factor" instead of "regeneration"?

Imo healing factor refers to natural healing processes that are supernaturally faster whereas regeneration can reconstitute vaporized limbs or other things that would lean more towards ‘naturally impossible’

[Star Wars] What exactly is a holocron?

I thought they were like advanced flash drives, but then some of them seem to have Force powers. Are they inherently Force sensitive or does that only happen to some of them? And if so, how?

A Holocron is created and accessed, at least partially, through making an impression on the base item using the Force. They have certain crystal structures as part of their design that we can infer have the ability to interact with the force, similar to the focusing crystals of a Lightsaber. All Holocrons are, in some way, created through using the Force. They can often detect the level of ability of a Force User, preventing users from accessing data they're not ready for, and there is some degree of artificial intelligence to the holographic user interfaces in some cases, allowing some level of intelligent interaction with them. They're not, in themselves, alive, though, so they are not so much 'Force Sensitive' as they are 'Force Imbued'. But, regardless, they are a Force user technology.

How does transparency work?

As far as I can tell, there aren't little holes for the photons to jump through in my window. I'm curious to know the mechanism behind transmitting light through a transparent material in addition to the obvious case of how it gets through the air we breathe.

So there are two different primary mechanisms for transparency. 1) Materials have what is called a "bandgap". In this bandgap, electrons in the material cannot have certain values of energy. That is, imagine a ball - you can give the ball any energy you want. But in a material, if you pretend the electrons are balls, they can actually only have certain energy values. Now in order for a material to interact with light, the light must be absorbed. So lets say you have an electron at some energy which tries to absorb the photon. If the total energy of the electron after the absorption was not allowed in the material, then the photon can't be absorbed at all, and the photon just passes through. This is the mechanism of transparency for many everyday materials. Also aside from just the energy, the momentum of the light must be conserved. This leads to a more complicated process, but sufficed to say that absorbing X energy and Y momentum from a photon can be prohibited in a material, meaning that the light won't be absorbed at all. 2) The second mechanism of transparency is where the photons have too much energy to interact with the electrons. In order for the electrons to interact with the photons, they have to pick up the photon energy. Imagine you are sitting on a swing. If someone pushes you nice and slow, you will start swinging and absorb their energy, and your swinging frequency will match up with their pushing frequency. But if some asshole comes up to you and starts quickly hammering on your back then you're not going to go swinging really quickly, you're going to sit there and vibrate while all that energy in your back dissipates and rattles up the chain. The same process happens in electrons - if the incident photon has an energy too high then the electron can't respond fast enough to capture that energy. Therefore, the photon will pass right through the material. This is the mechanism of transparency for things such as x-ray beams going through your bones. As you can see, transparency is actually a very difficult topic and is quite complicated.

ELI5: How can water evaporate normally in nature while having a 100°C boiling point?

The amount of energy that each molecule of water has is not equal, some have more and some have less than average. If a molecule at the surface happens to have more energy than average it can fly off. This is evaporation. The hotter the liquid the more molecules will have enough energy to fly off, and so the greater the rate of evaporation. When the water reaches its boiling point, so many molecules have lots of energy that they start to form a gas (water vapour) inside the liquid. Up to this point not enough molecules become gas, and so any bubbles that try to form get squeezed back into liquid.

ELI5: Quantum Zeno Effect and how it relates to Zeno's paradoxes.

I'll try with a toy example and cover the important points in quantum mechanics. Take out pen and paper. :) Draw a coordinate system and a unit circle of radius one with center in (0,0). This is the *quantum system*. Now consider a vector pointing from (0,0) to some point on the unit circle. This is the *state* of the quantum system. Also known as the *state vector*. Such a vector is *always* of length one. At any point you can tell the state vector to "collapse " to either the x axis or the y axis. You can't choose which one, it will do this randomly. The bigger the projection is on the corresponding axis, the more likely it is the state vector will collapse to that axis. This is called a *measurement*. Sometimes the state of a system can be *time dependent*. It changes over time. In our case that means the vector will rotate around the unit circle according to some rule. Now, the Zeno effect! lets say you start out with a state vector in (1,0), that is at one on the x axis and zero on the y. After a tiny fraction of a second you tell it to collapse to the x or y axis. But the vector is so close to the x axis it's almost certain to collapse to it. Then after another fraction of a second you ask it again. And again and again. The vector never gets a chance to get close enough to y axis to ever have any real chance of collapsing to it. That's the Zeno effect. *You keep measuring a quantum system over and over again and thereby forcing it to remain in the same state forever.* Edit: Clarified a few things.

How do we know it rains diamonds on saturn?

Technically we don't "know" We know 1) The chemical composition of the atmosphere contains a good chunk of methane based on light reflection analysis. 2) We know the mass/volume/density of saturn based on lots of other math and observations. We put those together and realize that in certain areas of saturn there is enough pressure/temperature to form diamonds. These would form for a bit *sorta* like rain/drops and hail do in our atmosphere and then "rain"

ELI5: why are dermatologists and doctors so hesitant to remove moles?

Why is it that doctors and dermatologists are so hesitant to remove moles? If moles can't turn cancerous anytime why would you not just remove them as a preventative measure?

The first rule of medicine is "do no harm." If a mole is benign (non cancerous) then it would be more harmful to remove it. Most procedures are a 30 minute removal but are also expensive. The risk of infection is always possible no matter how routine the procedure is. In the case of a benign mole, the risk outweighs the benefit.

No information can travel faster than c, so no event inside an event horizon can have any causal effect on the external universe. How then do external objects "know" the mass of a black hole? Is that information somehow accumulated at/outside the event horizon over the life of the black hole?

The information is encoded in the gravitational field which extends all the way through infinity. I'll explain it with charge because it's more immediate, but it's roughly the same with mass. Say you have an electron outside and far from the black hole. This electron has a charge and field lines extending out to infinity. We can imagine a very large sphere surrounding both the black hole and the electron. Computing the total flux of the electric field through the sphere ("counting field lines that reach infinity") gives the total charge inside; this is Gauss' theorem. This charge must always, always be conserved. Nothing in the Universe can change this. We lower the electron in the black hole. The field lines can distort, but they must still reach to infinity. There's nothing we can do by moving our puny electron that can change this very global fact about the behaviour of the field at infinity. As the electron crosses the horizon, we don't know/care what has happened to it, but we are sure there still is the same number of field lines, now emanating from the horizon, extending all the way to infinity. The total charge has not changed, and the black hole is now charged. There is no need for the charge information to get out. Sure, if the electron wiggles inside the horizon, the *radiation* it emits cannot get out. But the Coulomb field is a bit different from radiation, and retains itself the information about the total charge. Charge can actually be seen as a geometrical property or even a topological invariant of the electromagnetic field itself - it has a sort of nonlocal nature. You can measure it even though you're far away and have no causal contact with the stuff that has the charge, you just need to scan a surface enclosing it. In suitable situation and with smart definitions, mass in general relativity works in a very similar way. An aside: obviously you cannot communicate from inside to outside the horizon using the information of the total mass/charge... because those things cannot be changed, since they are strictly conserved (superconserved is the actual term). Everything fits together.

ELI5: The difference between a Therapist, Psychiatrist, and a Psychologist.

Therapist: A person who doesn't necessarily have a degree (but they very often do). But works to help people through problems such as bereavements or social anxieties. Psychologist: A person who studies the human brain and behaviour. These people mainly do research into why we are what we are. They study all types of human behaviour. From how we store memories. To why Mr Hitler was just that little bit too grouchy. They're also the ones who you can see and who will work things through with you a bit like a therapist. Psychiatrist: These guys are doctors. But doctors of the mind. And treat things like Schizophrenia and Psychosis as medical conditions. They prescribe medication to patients and will help them in medical treatment to get better. Also, they will also sit down with you and talk through any problems you may need to talk about.

[CMV] I think car alarms are a waste of money and don't prevent theft

These days, when you're walking through a parking lot, and you hear a car alarm go off, which is your first thought? A. Some dumbass set off his car alarm. B. Some dude's getting his shit jacked! I'm sure most people would say A. Now, if a car alarm has been going off for 20 seconds, which do you think: A. Some dumbass's car alarm went off for no good reason. B. Some dumbass can't figure out how to shut off his alarm. C. Some dude's getting his shit jacked! I'm more inclined to think its A or B. Now, let's take it a step FURTHER. What if someone is driving down the road in a car that has an alarm going off? A. That dumbass can't get his alarm to shut off! B. Some dude's getting his shit jacked! Again, I'm less likely to think B. I think the extreme number of false alarms on car alarms has made them completely ineffective and anybody that actually thinks an alarm will stop a theft is delusional. Change my view.

Court testimony and gathering nearby attention. If somebody's car was stolen from a parking lot, or broken into, suddenly you have valuable information that you previously categorized as useless. Not only that, but car alarms are loud and gather attention. The last thing thieves want is attention, and certain cues can tip you off to someone who does not own that car. If you look over and see something suspicious, you could be a valuable witness even if you write it off as some dumbass who doesn't know how car alarms work at first.

ELI5 What’s modernism and post-modernism?

Modernism was a movement in art and culture in the late 19th and early 20th century that was obsessed with new ways of doing things, owing in part to the technological and scientific advances of the era. Modern art, for example, eschewed realism in favor of abstraction and surrealism. Modernists would reject traditional ways of doing things simply because they were traditional. In the words of Vladimir Mayakovsky, a modernist Russian poet, they wanted to “throw all the old ways overboard from the Steamship of Modernity.” Post-Modernism came about in the mid to late twentieth century and was a reaction to Modernism. Whereas Modernists would reject traditional art and culture, Post-Modernism draws on both traditional as well as Modernist design. Post-Modern architecture for example might be modern in design but with Greek-style columns as a playful reference to Classical architecture. Post-Modern art and design is known for these “references” and commentaries on other work. These references are why Post-Modern art is sometimes considered “meta,” referring to itself or the medium in a provocative way.

What makes a gas a greenhouse gas? For example, what are the molecular properties of carbon dioxide (CO2) that allow it to retain heat, that nitrogen (N2) lacks?

Greenhouse gases absorb and re-emit infrared radiation. This means that instead of passing through the atmosphere and directly into space, some of the infrared radiation is re-emitted back toward the surface of the earth, increasing the net heat on the planet's surface. If it were re-emitted in the same direction that would be no problem, but the absorption and re-emission randomizes the direction of the light, effectively bouncing some of it back to the ground. Like a greenhouse does, hence "greenhouse effect". The molecular property you're looking for is frequencies of vibration. The ability to absorb and re-emit infrared comes from a molecule that has a change in energy of vibration frequencies that corresponds to infrared energies. They absorb the photon, vibrate at a higher frequency, and re-emit that photon as they return to their less energetic state. Vibration frequencies are characteristic to each molecule, and in fact are often used as an analytical tool to identify unknown ones. So, the gases with vibration frequencies that can be perturbed by infrared radiation are greenhouse gases while gases like nitrogen, oxygen, and argon are not.

Eli5. What decides an animals longevity as for as mortality? A horse, way stronger and healthier than most humans, live only to around 20 to 30 years, yet the steady rate when humans expire is around 70 to 80 years. How does this work?

The faster a speices cells divide, the longevity of their organ tissue, the efficiency of their kidneys and liver, and their diet and lifestyle all factor into age. Human tissue is pretty long lasting compared to most species, as cells divide DNA is slowly broken down, until cancer or organ failure or a dozen other diseases set in.

CMV: Restaurants that post their menus online without pricing are just hurting their own business

I mean, what's the point of doing so? If a prospective client is interested enough to access your online menu then he or she is interested in pricing as well. These restaurants are just creating pointless consumer friction by forcing prospects to either phone the restaurant ahead or show up and take a gamble on the prices. Frustration isn't a good way to start a customer relationship. And if your business strategy somehow dictates you shouldn't publish your prices then don't post your menu online. Why bring attention to the very information you want to keep private? It also makes your place seem elitist, like if you had to ask for pricing then you can't afford it anyway. And that might work for world class restaurants but not the random pizzeria that serves office workers. Come on, you are not fooling anyone.

Many restaurants are nationwide, or even international. Prices can vary wildly, even within a country/state/province. Including the wrong price accidentally would be worse, imo, than simply not having one.

I'm an early-career researcher, supervising a very poorly performing PhD student - reaching the end of my tether (Australia)

Hi all - seeking advice, experience and options - please let me know if this is not appropriate for this sub. Sorry - this is long. I am an early career researcher (4-years post PhD) and my research is in genomics. I am a co-supervisor of an international PhD student that is performing extremely poorly. Her project is being undertaken between a university and an industry/NGO. Her primary supervisor is in the university, and I am the least senior of her supervisors, my role is in industry/NGO. None of her other supervisors have any experience in genomics - so the majority of her supervision has fallen to me. In Australia - a PhD takes 3-4 years full time, and she is 2.5 years into her PhD. She has an undergrad and masters from her home country in a completely unrelated field - these helped her get a stipend. From day dot it was apparent that she had interest in genomics and bioinformatics, but woeful technique and zero aptitude for any laboratory work. Her first aim/experiment/chapter took over a year, remains unfinished and generated no meaningful data (she could not replicate/did not get consistent results.) She argued that she did not get results because there was something wrong with the samples. For her candidature seminar, her primary supervisor picked the most kind and lenient examiners - they identified a number of gaps and shortfalls in her project plan. She was passed and allowed to continue her PhD.She should not have been passed. The university used to have the option/ability to put a student on probation if they are not performing, requiring a number of deadlines to be met and the student to show due cause as to why they should be allowed to continue in their PhD - this option does not exist anymore. We changed her entire aims to make it as easy as possible for her to get some results, to have as much in silico analysis from publicly available data as possible. She has shown some aptitude for this but is very slow to integrate or perform these experiments, even with me holding her hand! We suggested she use the university computing cluster to undertake some time-critical and computationally expensive analyses for her current project, and put her in touch with both the university ICT and other students that use the computing cluster to undertake their projects, who took time out of their own studies and research to assist her/help her - but she refused to as it was "mostly command line" and she "could not understand it". She should have had this finished and done over a month ago - her study has basically been published by another group. Where this really brings me to the end of my tether is that I have been tasked to do the experimental work for her final chapter. Which consists of RNA extractions on 100 clinical samples and then enrichment library preparation and sequencing to generate data for her to analyse. Seriously. ​ I have two other PhD students who are coming up to their final seminars - they have been exemplary students and very much independent. I have not been able to give them the time I should be. I have my own projects too which I need to complete and report on and publish. I don't have time because I've been stuck holding this students hand from the very first day. I have brought her lack of aptitude and poor performance up with all of her supervisors from the very start - I basically get told it sucks but do everything you can to get her finished and out of her by the end of her 3rd year. I have had zero support from any of her supervisors. Has anyone been in this situation before? how did you address/handle it? is there opportunity at her final presentation/thesis review to recommend that she fail her PhD? Should I go above her other supervisors and bring this up to the university/course coordinator/dean? Any advice or guidance is so very very much appreciated. Thank you.

Who’s asking you to do the 100 extractions and enrichments and what is your end goal for your current position? To become a Professor or a Senior researcher ? Maybe consider leveraging this work into a better authorship such as a first first author ?

ELI5: Why does LED not illuminate areas well?

Comparing old 'orange' street lights to the new LED ones, the LED seems much brighter looking directly at it, but the area that it illuminates is smaller and in my perception there was better visibility with the old type. Are they different types of light? Do they 'bounce off' objects differently? Is the difference due to the colour or is it some other characteristic of the light? Thanks

LED lights are inherently directional. They do not emit light in a 360 degree arc like a sodium vapor light. Typically they are good for about 120 degrees. There are also significant pushes to reduce light pollution in cities, this is achieved by intentionally limiting the spread of the lights so that little light is scattered skyward.

ELI5:How does an economy crash.

One has been posted five years ago so its pretty old, and I would like a more simplified explanation.

A crash can ultimately be caused by many different things, but they all have the same effect: money stops circulating. To over simplify a healthy economy; a baker sells bread, he uses that money to buy flour from a farmer, the farmer uses that money to buy equipment from a factory, the factory uses that money to pay workers, the workers use that money to buy bread. But if the economy crashes, the factory closes down and so can't pay it's workers. Then the workers can't afford to buy bread. Because no one is buying bread, the baker can't afford to buy flour. The farmer can't afford to buy equipment. No has money to spend because no one else is spending money. It's a vicious circle.

Why am i cold inside at 66 degrees F, but very comfortable if not warm outside at the same temp?

There are a variety of factors. One is the sunlight; sun shining on you directly delivers thermal energy through radiation, which can warm you enough to make a noticeable difference. Another is activity; you are likely to be doing more intense activity outside (even if it is just walking, you are probably walking longer distances and at a quicker pace than inside). Then there's also the fact that you're likely wearing more clothing outside. Finally, there is a simple psychological element, especially when the sun is shining.

ELI5: Why the deep ocean creates total monstrosities compared to other regions.

The simple answer is evolution. As /u/friend1949 said it's all about perspective and what we are used too seeing. The deep ocean is an environment totally unlike anything we experience on a day to day basis, and life has evolved to survive in those conditions; Lack of sunlight means skin pigments become pointless to protect the skin, meaning most deep see animals are full or partly translucent; Why would a fish need bones or a tough exoskeleton when it spends it's life floating in water and not coming into contact with a hard physical surface it's entire life; They develop big eyes and bioluminescence to hunt and evade prey/predators. There's nothing about the deep ocean that creates monsters, it's purely a very different environment that we are not used too. If humanity had evolved to live underground in cave systems instead of the surface we would look and act very different to how we do now, and wouldn't consider monsters of the deep so strange.

ELI5: What happens when you tune a radio? How do the frequencies change?

The station frequencies don't change, but by tuning you are adjusting the receive part of your radio to become sensitive to a certain frequency you want to hear. Inside the radio are parts (capacitors, inductors and resistors) that allow this resonance frequency to be set.

I really want to study philosophy. Does this mean I should go to grad school?

I hear many say that the only true or real (or best) way to do it is in academia. But many people also advise strongly against going to grad school for philosophy. So it sounds like a double-bind if the best way to study philosophy is something you shouldn't do. Then if a person wants to seriously study philosophy, what other option is there? How sound is it to attempt to be self-taught in philosophy?

Certainly you will study philosophy if you go to graduate school, but unless you are wealthy or have an alternate career path mapped out, graduate school is for learning how to be an academic. That is, graduate school is for leaning how to *do* philosophy and *be* an (academic) philosopher.

ELI5: Why do Humans have multiple of some organs but not back ups of some very vital ones like heart, liver, stomach or brain?

The short answer is that every organ you have requires nourishment to be effective, and redundancies for everything would practically double the amount of food you would need to be healthy. While you do have two of some organs such as kidneys, they don't necessarily exist solely as backups. People with one kidney can't clean their blood as effectively as people with two kidneys, though they can still do it. Same with lungs, having both is definitely advantageous. Evolution isn't a designer with blueprints. Not having multiple organs isn't really all that harmful. Most people live plenty long enough to bear multiple children, even with their puny single heart. As such, because our current body structure is fairly effective, there was no evolutionary cause for change and natural selection doesn't necessarily favor someone with two hearts.

Do we act in accordance to what we think is rational or does is rational determined by our actions?

What kind of reading should I do to understand, do we act in accordance to what we think is ~~rational~~ meaningful or does is our values which ~~rational~~ determined by our actions? ​ Maybe I mean, values rather than rational.

More of a cognitive/social psychology question. There's various famous theories addressing this, most prominently: cognitive dissonance, and self perception theory. Either way, they both came about to explain why behavior often determines attitudes, as demonstrated in many studies. There's a bunch of criteria for predicting when behavior is more likely to determine behavior and visa versa by I've forgotten what they are.

ELI5: What about Tilt-Shift photography gives it the illusion of looking like toys.

Pictures like [these](http://i.imgur.com/KANFA.jpg), called tilt-shift photography, I know they use special lenses and what not. I'm not curious about how they're taken, but what exactly about the output, the finished product, makes us perceive them as miniature models? How is a tilt-shift photograph different from a normal that gives it that illusion?

It has to do with *depth of field*, and they way your eye works. When you are looking at something close, your eye has a very shallow depth of field. When you are looking at something far away, your eye has a much wider depth of field. Pretend you are looking at a long row of dominoes (or if you have some dominoes, set them up in a long straight row and put your eye level with the first one). If you put your eye close to the first domino and focus on it, the second domino will appear out of focus. However, if you focus your eye on the second last domino in the line, the last domino will still appear to be in focus. Your brain knows this instinctively. So when it sees a picture of something and everything around it is out of focus, it assumes that your eye must be very close to the thing that is in focus, and thus that thing must be very small. When everything in the picture is in focus, it assumes that your eye is far away and thus it must rely on other evidence to try to figure out how big everything in the picture is.

ELI5 how do anti anxiety medications like benzos work?

Neurons in your brain send signals to each through chemicals called neurotransmitters. Different neurotransmitters do different things. There's a neurotransmitter called GABA which is the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter. In other words, it reduces signals between neurons, and thus essentially calms down your brain. Benzos increase the effectiveness of the GABA in your brain, which in turn increases its calming effects.

Assistant professors competing against post docs for tenure track position

I just received an email from my department (top 5 in my field) inviting graduate students to sit in on faculty search presentations. I noticed that some of the applicants were post docs while others were already established assistant professors at other universities. I would assume that if an assistant professor has locked in some big grants, it would be near impossible for a post doc to receive an offer. This is a bit disheartening as a graduate student because it seems like the chances of getting a tenure-track position at a good university are even more tenuous if one must compete against applicants who are already assistant professors. For those of you familiar with the faculty search process, how are post docs and assistant professors compared?

Varies enormously by candidate. Postdocs are all potential, assistant professors have a faculty track record. If the faculty member's track record is good (grant support, senior authorship on publications) - they're highly competitive as a known, successful quantity. Perhaps the new institution offers a better opportunity or fit (professional or personal) and they're an easy first-choice hire. However, if their track record is bad - they're viewed with prejudice as having "failed" once, what's to change? If they're going from a high tier institution to a lower tier, there will also be questions about whether they couldn't hack it, or lacked ambition (the candidate can address these questions very successfully, but will need to say something about their decision). Good faculty members definitely have the leg up when in comes to relating to other professors as peers, and they (generally) have a far better sense of how to present their work, questions, and other considerations from a perspective that will gibe with the expectations of a professor. For example, they can inquire more competently about institutional support, submitting grants through the university office, and have a better sense of how the overhead and budgeting work. They also will have higher expectations in terms of differentiating themselves from the work of their own former supervisors, which postdocs don't need to do as aggressively (vision should still be unique, but all preliminary data can be from the mentor lab leveraging his/her resources and collaborations).

ELI5: How do corrosive materials not eat through their containers? Ex: What makes glass impervious to acid?

I've been wondering this ever sense middle school... Does it have something to do with the strength of the corrosive material? What's to stop an extremely strong acid from eating through everything?

Acids generally work by donating protons, generally shown in chemical reactions as H+, a hydrogen atom that has no electron. In order for an acid to react with another chemical, that chemical must have free electrons to react with the proton donated by the acid. Silicon Oxide (glass) is a completely stable chemical compound that has no free electrons, and so cannot react with acids. It doesn't so much have to do with the strength of the corrosive material as it does with how different chemicals react with each other. However, there is one acid that will eat through glass, Hydrofluoric acid. This is actually because of the fluoride, instead of the strength of the acid. Hydrofluoric acid is extremely dangerous to use and is probably the most dangerous and corrosive of the acids, however its 'acidic strength' is much weaker than many other acids. This is because of how we rank acid strength, which is based on how easily it donates a proton, not how easily it dissolves things.