[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [WH40k] Is there any TL;DR about history?

[Assistant]
Here we go...

At the dawn of time, there were beings called the C'Tan who ate stars.

Then the Old Ones arose. The lived long, pleasant lives.

Then the Necrontyr arose. The Necrontyr lived on a harsh planet orbiting a crap star; as such, they were short and didn't live very long. Long ago, they had an empire that went to war with the Old Ones, moslty over jealousy that the Old Ones lived such happier lives. The C'Tan at this point began eating souls instead of stars, and since the Old Ones' souls were particularly tasty, they allied with the Necontyr to defeat the Old Ones. This entailed the Necrontyr putting their minds into robotic bodies, but as they did so, the C'Tan ate their souls, leaving the Necrons as immortal but mindless slaves, now called the Necrons.

The Necrons, backed by the C'Tan, gained the upper hand and succeeded in wiping out the Old Ones, but not before the Old Ones uplifted the Eldar and created the Orkz. By the end of the war, there were only four C'Tan left - the Deceiver, Outsider, Night Bringer, and Void Dragon, the rest having been destroyed either by the Old Ones and Eldar (original continuity) or a rebellion by the Necrons themselves (current continuity). The Necrons, exhausted by the war against the Old Ones and unable to stand up to the rise of the Eldar, went into hibernation.

Eldar came to rule the galaxy, and for about 60 million years nothing much happened.

In 8000 BCE, the shamans of Earth came together and committed mass suicide so that all their souls would be reborn in a single person, the Emperor.

Eldar and human emotions give rise to the Chaos gods Tzeentch, Nurgle, and Khorne.

Eldar achieved a post-scarcity society which used robots to do all its fighting. A few think this is a bad idea and retreat to more ascetic planets on the galactic rim, becoming the Exodite Eldar. The rest live lives of pointless excess and hedonism, and don't notice humans gradually carving out a new empire, starting in the 18th millennium.

Around the 23rd millennium, psykers began to emerge among humanity, and brought with them daemoic possession. Human worlds collapsed into anarchy, and Earth was surrounded by Warp storms. Civilisation completely collapsed on Earth - think *Mad Max* but one a bigger scale with better guns and more grimdark. Around the 27th millennium, the Emperor managed to unite Earth's technobarbarians into a single polity. and also gained the support and technology of the Martian government.

In the 28th millennium, the Eldar's collective hedonism finally came to a head as all their selfish energies combined to form Slaanesh, which ripped open the Eye of Terror around the Eldar homeworld and, as a side effect, dispelled the warp storms surrounding Earth. Some of the remaining Eldar decided to live on nomadic ships and hope to one day combine their souls to form Ynnead, the new god of death, who will be able to kill Slaanesh. The rest, the Dark Eldar, live in a city in the webway where they indulge in ecstasy and insane torture of other beings in order to keep Slaanesh from eating their own souls. Meanwhile, the Emperor managed to reconquer planets of the old human empire.

In the late 30th millennium, the Emperor created the Primarchs by genetic engineering as the first of what would eventually become the Space Marines. The Chaos Gods, fearful of what the Emperor would bring, interfered somehow and scattered the baby Primarchs across the galaxy (though all managed to land on human planets). The Emperor launched a massive crusade to restore the primarchs and reunite humanity, which he did.

Then in the early 31st millennium, Horus led a rebellion against the Emperor, brining half the Space Marines and a full third of the Imperial Guard with him. He was narrowly defeated, but the Emperor was critically wounded, and thus was interred on the Golden Throne to watch over and guide humanity. Remaining Traitor Legions retreat into the Eye of Terror. Roboute Guilliman instituted a reform of the Space Marines into a large number of smaller chapters, though not everybody approved, and Leman Russ flat-out refused to accept the new rules because of course he did. The surviving loyalist Primarchs gradually disappeared.

In the 36th millennium, the Ethereal Caste united Tau (who might possibly be surviving Necrontyr) society under the philosophy of the Greater Good. Shortly therafter, the Tau discovered a spaceship and successfully reverse engineered it to give limited Warp travel.

Around the 41st millennium, Tyranids appeared in the galaxy (though there is evidence they had a small presence as early at the 35th millennium) and the Necrons began to reawaken.

And thus in the grim darkness of the present time, there is only war.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: What happens when you type a URL into the browser and hit enter?

I would like to understand how a webpage is rendered. I know that there is a lot more going on in the background other than simply pulling up the page based on the URL you type in...

[Assistant]
First, it has to convert that URL into an actual computer address known as an IP address. The computer will first look to itself for that information. That IP address for that URL may be cached (a temporary storage of recently accessed information) or listed in the computer's hostfile (a permanent file that contains a list of IPs to be associated with various URLs/hostnames).

If the computer cannot find that information locally, then it has to reach out and ask for that information. This is known as a DNS request. DNS stands for "Domain Name Service" and it's how computers find out about each other. Your computer will have, as part of its network configuration, a list of DNS servers that it can ask for information. Those DNS servers will look locally (to see if they have it cached) or ask other DNS servers. At some point you'll either get to a DNS server that has the information cached or you'll get to an authoritative DNS server which exists as the primary source of information about a given domain. The reply then works its way back to the requesting computer.

Your computer now knows the IP address of the web page you're trying to access. It will now see if that computer is online and accepting communication requests. It will attempt to establish a "hand shake" with that computer. Hand shakes consist of three messages between two computers. The first basically asking if the second is there and ready to communicate. The second acknowledging that it is ready and asking if the first is ready. Lastly the first then acknowledges that it is ready. There is also synchronization of communication settings and the such.

To do this, your computer has to know how to reach the website. It first determines whether or not that website is on the same local network. It does this by comparing the website's IP address to the computer's own address and information it has about the network it is on (configured as part of its network settings). If the website is determined to be on the same local network, it will try and communicate directly with it. If the website is determined to be on a remote network (most likely) it will then communicate with a "gateway" (also part of the computer's network configuration) that will pass on, or route, the request to the website's network.

Communication with different points and devices along the way uses a different set of addresses known as MAC addresses. This works similarly to the URL-IP translation above. The computer checks its cache locally to see if it knows the MAC address for that IP, if not it asks and waits for a reply.

Assuming the most likely case, it will work like this:

1. Computer determines the IP is remote. Sends the request via the gateway.
2. Computer sends a request to the gateway using the gateway's MAC address.
3. The gateway looks at the IP and its own routing table and forwards the request to the MAC address of the next router down the line.
4. This continues until you reach network the website is on.
5. The website hears the request and replies back much in the same manner, just in reverse.

Once the handshake is complete, the computers begin communicating. Your computer will send a request for a specific web page (HTTP GET) and the host will acknowledge the request and try and send you the web page or throw back an error if it cannot.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [WWE]Why aren't wrestlers sued when they attack people outside of a match?

[Assistant] Overwhelming social pressure and pervasive institutional corruption. The wrestlers are all 'independent contractors', and the show has plenty of instances of wrestlers being fired or otherwise retaliated against at the whims of the McMahons. Nobody wants to stir things up just to get canned or made an example of.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Futurama] Why does robot Santa consider Dr Zoidberg to be nice

In s2e8; Xmas story, we are told that Santa has incredibly biased calculations that deem everyone naughty. However, when he appears before the planet express crew (and some robot hobos) he says all of them are naughty except Dr Zoidberg, who he gifts a pogo stick.

Why is it the Zoidberg is deemed nice when seemingly everyone else isnt, despite no particular clear differences to anyone else.

[Assistant]
Zoidberg is kind and loving to those around him even if they mistreat him. also the fact he's selfless and pure at heart.

Hi's only desire is his friends and he cares for them.

Edit: Watch the tip of the zoidberg if you want to see how kind he really is.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why do some developed nations (UK, France, Germany, etc) have large populations of migrants, but other developed nations (e.g. Japan) have very little?

[Assistant]
Doesn't Japan have stricter laws about immigration and naturalization?

I would be surprised if there wasn't an illegal underground market for undocumented workers, however, like in Qatar, or UAE, or Saudi Arabia, you are treated like dirt and expelled after your work visa expires.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Marvel & DC] Which heroes/villains are combat underachievers, compared to what their powers allow?

I'm not talking about Reed Richards not curing cancer, or Superman not eradicating all crime on Earth. That stuff's hard, and maybe there's a good reason they haven't done it.

I'm talking about good old fashioned beatdowns.

Some characters are, on paper, capable of extremely impressive feats. But we never get to see it. At best we get to see it once in a blue moon, before everyone again forgets that they can do this.

Everyone except that character's fans.

That character's fans, this is your time.

[Assistant] Plastic man. It's come up more recently, but the guy is incredibly powerful to the point that he's one of batman's biggest concerns in the super hero community. His flexibility makes him pretty much indestructible and he can expand to great sizes. He's been frozen, shattered into little pieces, and spread across the planet, but still was able to survive. he's also crazy enough to be completely unpredictable, which is batman's issue with him. He's overall a goofy guy, so he's not really a threat but his powers really exceed that of Mr Fantastic. Also, Barry Allen. Reverse Flash is able to cause people's atoms to explode by just touching them or age them into dust so flash must hold back a lot when he goes against his villains.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why do dump trucks have an extra pair of wheels under them that don't touch the ground?

[Assistant] Used to work in a Freightliner plant.  They're called drop axles.  They're lowered when the truck (often a dump truck) is carrying a heavy load, to help distribute the weight across the frame.  They have inflatable airbag suspensions.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
What are the most fundamental assumptions that physicists have to make in order to derive the laws of physics?

EDIT: To clarify, I mean is there a particular set of first principles from which the laws of physics (or most of them at least) can be mathematically derived. For example, I imagine one of the assumptions would be the size of the fundamental constants, another that information cannot travel faster than c, yet another may be that there are 4 dimensions.

Essentially I am wondering what physical first principles we do not have an explanation for and so have to assume a priori in order to derive the laws of physics.

[Assistant]
Causality
Locality
and
Repeatability

Which basically sums up to saying that when something happens, it happened because of the previous state of the system, that the system is not influenced by the results from other systems it doesn't interact with, and that if the system was put in the same state it was before it would behave in the same way.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How did Game Genies work for nes/Sega Master System?

[Assistant]
Game Genie's worked a little different depending on each system because each system treated cartridges a little different.

In general a Game Genie was designed to sit between the console and the cartridge and when the console asked the cartridge for data the game genie could secretly change it before passing it back to the console.

So for example you have a game where you start with 3 lives. That number 3 exists somewhere in the data or code on the cartridge. Let's assume the number 3 is stored at the 5000th byte of the cartridge's data bank. On the Game Genie you'd enter a code like "50 00 99". This would tell the genie that every time the console tried to load the number from address 5000 to send back a value of 99 instead of what was really there. Now when a new game starts you have 99 lives because that's the number the console recieved.

While that code is obvious in its meaning the genie usually used scrambled codes in a known way, so for example you might actually enter the code "90 05 09" and it would get unscrambled into the more meanful code.

Different consoles had different ways of working. On the NES the cartridge was linked directly into the CPU bus in such a way that it could control *all* memory, not just the cartridges (this allowed NES cartridges to enhance the original hardware, not just provide game data) by routing any memory access through the cartridge pins first. This means that the cartridge could even override the data in the consoles built in ram.

So Game Genie codes for the NES might do things like "hold" a byte. What this means is that it essentially kept a value in RAM locked - attempts to change it wouldn't work. So you have a place in ram where health was stored and when health reached 0 you are supposed to die. The game genie could just hold that value at 99 and now you are invincible.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How come our brain can create auditory and visual hallucinations from schizophrenia for example, but we cannot do it willingly?

[Assistant]
We associate only parts of our brain with "doing things willingly". For example, we cannot (generally) willingly feel less or more anxiety, hunger, desire, and so on. Similarly, we cannot (generally) willingly experience blackouts, goosebumps, hallucinations, and so on.

In short, we are much more than a concious being, and we exist in/as a body with all kinds of functions that we have (generally) no conscious control over.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: When you rub your eyes and see rainbow colors and swirling patterns whats really happening?

[Assistant]
Pressure can stimulate the cells in your eyes that usually respond to light. As a result, even though there *isn't* associated light, they fire off signals to the brain.

The brain doesn't have any way of sorting 'light' signals from any other that come from those cells, so it just says "Ok, I'll paint the picture!" and creates an image based on what it receives.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
When listening to the radio in a traveling vehicle and then going through a tunnel, and the audio of the song/news turns to static, what is being played through the radio if the signal is lost, as in, what provides the 'static' sound?

Thank you everyone for all the informative responses. Much obliged :)

[Assistant]
For radio signals to be received correctly, with few errors, the signal to noise ratio (SNR) should be above a certain threshold. The SNR can lowered by decreasing the signal strength (which the tunnel causes) or increasing the noise. For analog signals (AM/FM) as the signal strength drops the quality of the signal becomes worse, which we hear as the static noise drowning out the FM station.

The static you hear (especially at FM frequencies) is mostly made from radio frequency interference (RFI) from the electronics all around us (eg, motors, power supplies, computers). Any electrical device can, and may, produce some amount of radio noise. There is also a thermal noise floor of the radio receiver which limits its sensitivity (but RFI will generally be the stronger interference) and even noise from space (see CMB). All these sources of noise add up to create what we usually call white noise (its the same as the snow on an analog TV).

An analogy of white noise is people in a crowd. If you are in the middle of a crowd and everyone is talking you wont be able to pick out any particular conversion but there will be a lot of noise. if someone picks up a megaphone and starts talking into that, you will be able to hear that person above all the background noise (even if the volume of background noise doesnt change).

You can us visualize the radio spectrum with a device called a software defined radio (SDR) and the cheap ones can be picked up for less than $20 (RTL-SDR).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why are my hands and ears much less resistant to the outside cold than my let's say nose or entire face for that matter?

[Assistant]
Because they don't matter in the long scheme of things.

We can survive perfectly fine (well, the loss is very minimal) if our ears or nose are cold, or even severely damaged by the cold.

So they get very little blood circulation (bringing warmth from your core), and don't need a whole lot of protection from the elements because they aren't sending very much blood back (low bloodflow goes both ways), and thus even if they are freezing off they aren't damaging your overall survival.

Basically, in the case of surviving low temps, they aren't worth the effort/resources your body would need to stay alive.

And they aren't worth protecting long term at the cost of lowering your overall survival (like say...your legs are).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [MCU] If you had the time stone (or just the time by itself) could you fall in love with Red Skull and sacrifice him for the Soul Stone?

[Assistant]
1. Who possibly would.

2. Im pretty sure the fact hes still alive despite nearly a century passing and levitates suggests that the Red Skull is exempt from the Soul Stone sacrifice as his guardian.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How can headphones deliver decent amounts of bass when normal speakers usually require a large subwoofer to produce the same effect?

[Assistant] "Normal speakers" are trying to make sound in a room that's many times larger than the tiny space in your ear canal where earbuds are making sound (or the small space inside the headphones where they are making the sound).  Bigger spaces take more energy for the sound to be perceived as at the same "level".


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[ASOIAF/GoT] What if Stannis had won the Battle of Blackwater?

Lets say in this scenario Tywin's reinforcements never arrive to King's Landing. How would the war have gone differently if Stannis was victorious?

[Assistant]
Cersei Lannister is definitely executed. Her children's fate might depend on Davos' advice. Tyrion would be spared, as he was doing his duty though he killed many of his men, maybe sent to the wall if unlucky. Zero to minimum lootings.

Also Robb is probably forced to capitulate later on and fight for Stannis.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Is the act of sexual intercourse hardwired into the brain?

Like obviously the drive for intercourse is hardwired, but like is the actual process of putting the key into the keyhole also hardwired, or is it a learned experience (eg. observing it).

[Assistant] I think it's hardwired in most ancestor species, so almost definitely in humans too. Hard to tell at a glance because we learn about it young and see it all over because of porn etc etc, society and all that.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] Why are human pilots needed? Couldnt the ships fly themselves to destroy shields if needed?

For that matter, why do the ships need droids?  Seems like they would simply get their own brains.

[Assistant]
They could, but the competence and creativity of a human pilot far outweighs anything but the most expensive of quasi-sapient AI. Something even the Empire didn't have the resources to build, power, and maintain en masse.

As for why R2 units? By acting as the fighter's computer, they can perform necessary calculations that humans just can't do on the fly, and, and because they're removable and mobile, they can accompany their pilot to perform other activities that would also take a human much longer to do.

The result is a hyper-effective tag team that covers for each other's weaknesses under a huge variety of conditions. Weaknesses that couldn't be eliminated from one or the other without *prohibitively* expensive experimentation.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: Why do people hear that "ocean sound" when putting a shell to their ear?

Occasionally tried this when I was little, but never really thought about why this happens.

[Assistant]
It's because of air bouncing around.

Think about how you can hear the wind because it moves things around and even if there's nothing to move, you can hear it whistling past buildings or thumping into walls.  Well, even a tiny breeze makes noise but usually it's so quiet we can't hear it or don't notice.  That's where the shell comes in.  The shape of the shell magnifies the sound of a tiny breeze to the point where it's loud enough to hear.  So when you put your ear to a shell, you're not hearing the ocean, you're hearing tiny breezes moving in the shell.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 Why do injuries hurt when weather changes occur?

[Assistant]
The most popular theory blames the drop in atmospheric pressure that accompanies rain. Think of it like blowing up a balloon. Theres inside air pushing out, and outside air pushing in. Atmospheric pressure is always pushing on our bodies in a similar way. If the pressure outside of the body drops, gasses inside the body can expand, particularly the gasses dissolved in the fluid surrounding your joints and tendons.

Now consider your injury. Think about pain as nerves that have been irritated. Somehow they didnt heal right, or they might be inflamed. That expansion of fluid around your damaged Achilles might be microscopic, but it can really trigger these nerve endings by putting additional pressure on them, causing pain.

As for the temperature, the theory goes like this: cold may cause muscles to tense up, and that contraction can also aggravate those damaged nerves.

Long story short: A drop in atmospheric pressure may trigger an increase in the pressure of your bodys fluids on damaged nerves, causing pain.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
How do we know the mass of planets?

I understand Newton's universal law of gravitation, but how did he come to that point? It seems like there were far too many unknowns during that time... How did he measure the radius of the earth? How did he come up with the universal constant without knowing the mass of the earth? etc.
How did we get to this point?

[Assistant] Eratosthenes in ancient Greece/Egypt figured out the circumference of the Earth by considering the angle of the sun on the solstice at various places. Newton figured out his law of gravity by examining Kepler's empirical laws and realizing that they were implied by an inverse square force. Cavendish measured the gravitational constant by examining the deflection of a rotating pendulum around large balls of lead.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Why do we use Caesium in atomic clocks?

As far as I understand it, Caesium is not exactly easy to work with. It's not exactly a common element and is very reactive, aren't there any better alternatives?

[Assistant]
Caesium is a fun element because it is easily excited. To say it more properly, it's easy to ionize, you can do so with visible light (so it works as a photoelectric material), and it can easily be ionized by an electrically powered source of microwave radiation.

In addition to having a single electron in its outer non-filled shell (some other elements also have that), caesium has a higher energy difference between electron states. More accurately, caesium has a larger hyperfine structure, which, in terms of an atomic clock, means that the changes in electron state that the clock observes happen more often. Since an atomic clock counts those changes, that means that the more they happen, the more accurate the clock can be.

This allowed, some decades ago, to precisely define a second as, SI definition follows, "the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
CMV: Handing Republicans control over the executive and legislative branches will not help the Progressive movement.

I strongly dislike the DNC and am really upset with Obama for tapping Buttigieg and Klobuchar to endorse the man he thought shouldn't run, Biden. I can't find a reason for anyone to back Biden, or anyone who likes him and despises Trump is beyond hypocritical. I mean would you support a man who puts kids in cages and wants to build a wall? A sexual predator? No, I don't like Biden either, because at the extension of Obama's hand this is what his cabinet did. I truly, do not want these people to be in power anymore. But I think we (Progressives) have little choice because of the two party system and manufacturing consent.

If Republicans are in control of all three branches economic inequality and environmental pollution will get significantly worse. It will plateau, prob get worse with Dems, but it will get astonishingly worse more quickly with Republicans. They're smart, they'll throw us scraps (1.2k stimulus) but will block anything that's not in line with Mitch McConnell's philosophy. The progressive left has been, for years, trying to gain its footing back. It died with Zuccotti park, it died with Nader, now we have another shot, and although our leader isn't running for president he's not dead. He lead the insurgency, and we should follow that. If we haven't been able to rise up while the ineffective "do nothing dems" have been in power what makes you think we'll have a better chance against a smart opposition like the GOP?

My fear is that as the boomers die and we mass exodus the DNC we will not coalesce and be able to face the GOP in unity. Yes, the majority of America will want to be a leftist country but we'll have a conservative stronghold as the DNC dies and the mass media funding like MSNBC will just turn into Fox news. We would need to put strong efforts into independent news stations which be hard to do as the mass media/Social Media like google and FB oppose it.

I'm not saying go vote for Biden, it's hard for me to bring myself to do that. But I'm curious what you all think will happen if *this* administration is in power for four more years. I essentially feel like we need to rise our insurgency will the elite is still split between GOP and DEM because when one of them gets all of the power we'll be screwed.

Edit: The DNC needs us. We should demand Biden immediately apologize to Tara Reade and use executive orders to call a climate emergency and implement the GND day one. Then appoint Bernie the head of a financial regulation office to tax billionaire companies, and not.veto.m4a.

[Assistant] I agree we should vote for Biden for reasons like the supreme court this time around(and how destructive trump is as a president and the whole anti science attitude coming from the white house)  but eventually progressives will have to either stop voting for the democratic nominee to establish themselves as a voting block, or launch a large protest or something. If the democratic party feels like they will lose the election unless they can get progressives on board they will make concessions. Sort of like the tea party movement in 2010 and the freedom caucus. They exerted pressure perfectly and are now basically the Republican party. We need to do the same cause if the Democrats think we will just fall in line everytime a centrist wins then they will feel no need to adjust their policies.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[WH40k] Are there any really advanced human worlds that have been recently discovered by the Imperium?

I know that warp storms can have strong spatio-temporal effects that can separate a world or system from outside access, so has the contemporary Imperium encountered human colonies that still retain the high level of technological advancement present during the pre-Age of Strife era?

For instance, the Luna Wolves encounter the human Interex during the Great Crusade whose mortal weapons and warriors are a match for the Space Marines when fighting breaks out, could it be possible that a world containing advanced human civilization or even a functional STC be lurking about somewhere?

[Assistant]
In the Chaos Daemons codex (I think it was that one) it was mentioned that there was a planet who had completely conquered disease, which requires a high technology level and lots of research.

Then, of course, Nurgle took issue with that and wiped them out in under a year.

There are really advanced planets in the Imperium. They are generally paradise worlds. There are also planets who were isolated and progressed independently, leading to a non-religious view of technology, which would result in a faster level of technical advancement.

The Adeptus Mechanicus would be inclined to stamp the last one out, however.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: How can the color spectrum be wrapped into a continuous color wheel? How can the highest frequency colors blend into the lowest frequency colors without clashing?

[Assistant]
Because our eyes only detect three colours of light: red, green, and blue.

When both red and blue light reaches our eyes but not green, we perceive it as magenta (a bright pinkish purple color).

When both red and green light reaches out eyes but not blue, we perceive it as yellow - but what is interesting is that things that reflect *yellow light* will stimulate both our red and green receptors as well (just not *as much* for the red receptor as red light would) so yellow light also stimulates the red and green detectors, hence why it looks yellow.

In short, there are two ways to see yellow - from actual yellow light (which is between the wavelengths most detected by the red and the green receptors) and also from a little bit of red light and a little bit of green light both being detected at the same time.

But there is only one way to detect magenta, since there's no magenta wavelength! The wavelength between red and blue is just the green wavelength, but if you are detecting both red and blue but *not* green, it can't be a really bright green spilling into red and blue! So it must be something else. As such, our minds blend the colours smoothly as we add or remove various amounts of each colour, and this necessitates a ring-like structure.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Witcher] Who are the gods?? multiple gods are believed to exist but not much seems to be known about them.

So there are so many monsters and all different kinds of magic, there are also demons and The Watchers who are the angels of The Witcher universe so what of gods??? I know Freya is mentioned and in Witcher 1, Geralt fights a god named Dagon or atleast something I think is a god and there is a Gwent card of Dana Meadbh who is a goddess so they have made their presences known but what of the other gods???
Did they cause the conjunction of the spheres possibly?

So who are the gods??

[Assistant] The gods are simply extremely powerful beings. Some are believed to be native to the Witcher world and others brought by practitioners from different worlds. Only a handful seem to have any real observable power. They could be similar to djinn in that they're beings of raw magical energy. Or something like gaunter Odim and far more powerful than any known magical being. Or they could be completely fictitious with roots from some monster or demon or relic encountered by scared refugees that paid worship to what they feared.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 - What makes a rechargeable battery rechargeable? And what would happen if you tried charging a non rechargeable battery?

[Assistant]
So batteries generate electricity because of chemical reactions they undergo. In a standard alkaline battery, zinc and manganese (IV) oxide react and produce electricity. After enough of the chemicals react that the reactions can no longer proceed, the battery is considered exhausted.

The chemical reactions can be forced to proceed in the opposite direction by forcing electric current through the battery in the other direction. This turns the chemical products back, more or less, into their original forms.

Rechargeable batteries use different chemicals than zinc and manganese oxide, ones that respond better to a reversal of current.

You *can* recharge a non-rechargeable battery, but you won't get all the power back, and it can be dangerous.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
If cat's are covered in fur, and don't pant or sweat. How do they regulate there temperature when they fall asleep in the sun or on a heat vent?

First off. I know cat's pant if they get hot enought but they don't while they are sleeping.

Moving on, how do they keep from over heating when they are sleep for hours in hot places? Do they have a lowered body temperature while sleeping? In general cats don't seem to mind heat so are they just built for higher temps? If so how? what adaptations do they have to deal with heat?

Thank you for looking at my question and I look forward to finding the answer!

[Assistant]
Well first of all cats have a higher regular internal temeprature than humans do.

Remember that fur is not only for keeping them warm, it functions as a thermal insulator, so it helps keep them cool as well. Also they thermo\-regulate via their large ears and by grooming themselves \- the saliva from their tongues acts like sweat that cools their body when it evaporates.

Hope that helps :\)


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [General] If someone is turned into a vampire but freely chooses to never consume human blood, not even once - does that individual gain or lose any advantages or disadvantages to doing this?

[Assistant]
This depends on what universe you're in.

In *Buffy the Vampire Slayer,* Angel subsists indefinitely on animal blood, and merely doesn't like the taste.

In *Vampire: the Masquerade,* animal blood is much less potent than human blood, and "vegetarian" vampires must consume more of it.

In *Vampire: the Requiem,* not only is the above still true, but only weak vampires can exist at all without human blood - and particularly powerful vampires consume vampire blood.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why does some food (especially fast food) change taste when reheated?

[Assistant] Cooking is a chemical change, a chemical change is something thats permanent. So when you cook something thats been cooked its like cooking with different ingredients. Flour tastes different than bread, and bread tastes different from toast.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
What would a utilitarian make of the Truman show?

The show brought joy to the millions who watched it. At the same time, it's kinda a horrifying concept that manipulates a man into what amounts to totalitarian control of his life. would a utilitarian oppose the show if it were real? How would they respond?

[Assistant]
This is quite similar to a common ethical thought experiment known as the Sadist's Convention. It involves spectators in an arena deriving pleasure from watching a single unwilling participant be tortured. This is presented as an objection to utilitarianism; our gut instinct is that this is morally wrong, even if the pleasure generated by a stadium of sadists is greater than the pain endured by a single unlucky person. Here are the most common responses to the thought experiment from a utilitarian standpoint, which could also apply to your example:

1. Bite the bullet! Agree that as strange as it might seem, a stadium full of sadist pleasure really does outweigh the pain of an individual, and that the Sadist's Convention isn't morally wrong.

2. Argue that the pleasure of the sadists does not actually outweigh the pain of the individual. Perhaps pain should be weighted more heavily than pleasure, or some other solution that "fixes" the utility math.

3. Argue that the pleasure of the sadists is incomparable to the pain of the individual. This generally involves implicating things like personal freedom, inalienable rights, dignity, etc. In utility calculations. While this is the most common response, it also typically commits one to consequentialism, rather than pure utilitarianism. Realistically speaking, this is likely how most modern consequentialist philosophers would respond; very few, if any, philosophers continue to defend pure utilitarianism.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
What use is having stocks to a company once their IPO is done?

As I understand it, a company sells a bunch of stocks to raise a lot of money for some investment they want to do, and then they forever either pay a little of their profits to shareholders as dividends forever, or they pay a bunch of it to them once as a buyback. But is there any advantage or use for the company in the stocks at this point? It seems not useful to the company to constantly be paying part of the profits to some outside person.

[Assistant]
You seem to have the misconception that (1) the pre-IPO Company has no shares and the shares only exist after IPO, and (2) the Company exists to benefit itself. In reality, (1) the Company has always had shares since it was created (the act of incorporation is the act of creating shares), and (2) the Company exists to benefit its shareholders.

(1) When you register a company you create shares and then distribute them among the initial investors. In some cases that's just one person, and in some cases it might be a few people, each with a certain number of shares. When you IPO a company, usually you just create more shares and sell those shares to the public. Sometimes you don't even create new shares, you just sell your existing shares into the public market.

(2) The "Company" exists only to benefit its shareholders. This is called a fiduciary duty. The objective of a Company is not to grow bigger or better, sometimes it might do that in order to better serve its shareholders, but it's not the actual function of the Company, which is to generate as much return for its shareholders as possible. Pre-IPO and post-IPO that doesn't really change, though the identity of its shareholders might. The IPO process might be used to enable pre-IPO investors to sell their shares at a good price, or it might be used to enable the Company to get cash to expand for the benefit of its pre-IPO investors.

(3) There's nothing stopping companies from raising more cash by selling more shares again at a later date. This is actually very common and can come in many forms (e.g. rights issues / convertible debt).


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Can someone explain tectonic plates and what they physically are and what they do?

[Assistant]
Ever seen ice on a frozen lake? Similar idea.

The crust of the Earth is, more or less, just where it is so cold that the molten rock has gotten a chance to freeze over.  This crust of frozen rock (as in it is now solid again instead of flowing around like it does further down) helps insulate the interior of the Earth.

Thin layer of solid rock up on top where it is cold. A lot of hot molten stuff below.  The further down you go, the hotter it gets.

Hot things tend to expand and become less dense than when they are cold. This means that molten rock near the core of the Earth gets really hot and floats up towards the solid rock crust. There it cools off again and, eventually, drops.

This means there is a current.  Much like the ocean. Except these currents move really slowly.  Rock is a lot denser than water and it takes a lot longer for the flow to happen.

All this movement just below the crust causes it to fracture. In some places the hot stuff even pushing its way out. This is where we get volcanoes.  But, let's get back to the crust being broken apart.

The crust, that is the solid part near the surface, is being pulled and pushed in different directions as this hot current moves underneath it and tries to drag the solid part along with it. This means that the crust of the Earth is separated into several huge plates and they are bumping into each other.

But it is taking place incredibly slowly.

Now let's move away from ice and talk about cars.  Two cars hit each other with a head on collision. Their bumpers aren't the same height. What happens?  When they hit the car with the higher bumper tends to go up. The one with the lower bumper tends to go down.

Okay. Now two cars with the bumper in the same place hit. What happens? Depends on how they hit, really. Sometimes it creates a push upwards and the front of both cars lift. Sometimes it causes a push downwards and both cars bend towards the road.

Similar things happen when plates collide. But it is much, much, much slower. How slow? Slow enough that the impact doesn't cause the rocks to shatter. Instead the rock faces of the plates keep pushing at each other until the rock actually bends.

Yes, solid rock will bend. It just takes a lot of constant force taking place over a long, long time.

So, when two plates collide into each other they don't always hit evenly. Sometimes one gets shoved under the other. Sometimes both sides go up. Sometimes both sides go down. It depends on how they collide, at what angle, and how the plates are matched.

When the force is directed upwards the rock is bent up to become mountains. When it is bent downwards it can form valleys or trenches.

Because the places between the plates offer a natural connection to the hot magma below, most volcanoes occur along the plate boundaries.  Earthquakes happen along the plate boundaries (fault lines) and that is due to the fact that these rocks that are moving past one another aren't that well lubricated. Even though the movement is slow, there is still a lot of energy needed to move something the size of a continent. If you press the palms of your hands together tightly and slide them across one another you'll notice a lot of slipping. It will move, the bumps on your hands will catch one another causing it to stop, and then the steady pressure causes you to push past this and it moves faster all at once as the energy is released. Same idea. The movement gets stuck or slowed down by something. Once it gets past this obstacle a lot of energy is released all at once and there is a lot of movement right there along the fault line. Something that was moving at an inch a year suddenly moved a foot or so. That releases a lot of energy at once and earthquakes are the shock waves from this.

So, that's the best answer I've got. Rock goes from liquid to solid because its too cold where we are for rock to stay a liquid. Still, there is a lot of movement down below at it causes the crust to break up a bit and twist, turn, and crash together in places.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
If I find CS50 too difficult, will I dislike programming in general?

I was hoping to build an app (just for fun). Ive been doing CS50 and am finding it tedious and difficult. Is programming not for me? I thought Id find it fun because I as a kid I made pretty decent websites with HTML in Notepad, but so far Ive just been feeling like an idiot and not really enjoying it. Solving the problem sets doesnt come naturally for me, and I have to google endlessly to make slight progress. I liked the JavaScript course on Khan Academy, but that was a bit too far in the other direction (a bit too easy/babyish).

[Assistant]
No! CS50 is focused on C programming and some people find it hard to grasp the idea of low level programming.
As you said you like JavaScript, so continue developing with it. If you like front end stuff with html, css and JavaScript just do that. If you also like back end, check out nodeJS.

Take small steps in learning programming. The best thing that works for me is learning by doing. Try something and if you get stuck watch tutorials and Google a lot. Also don't be afraid to ask.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why do shoelaces untie themselves while headphones get themselves into knots?

[Assistant]
Headphones are often covered in rubber, which is a sticky material, whereas shoe laces are often made of fabric, which is a soft and somewhat slippery material.
If we had shoelaces made of rubber, they would stay longer together and vise versa with headphones.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [all] Which villain has suffered the most tragedy?

[Assistant]
Doctor Doofenshmirtz.

His mother didn't even show up for his birth.

He was forced to wear dresses his whole elementary school life.

He had to work as a lawn gnome and so lost balloony, his best friend.

He had to compete with "Only Son" a prize winning show dog.

He was abandoned and raised by oscelots.

The guy has had it rough.

He was shut out of the family dynamic when his brother claimed his mother as his own with permanent marker.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] What is the most petty thing in academia that you have done/had witnessed others do?

[Assistant] A professor counted the ceiling section squares in his office and another professor's office and demanded that his office be increased to the same size. Space was taken from the adjacent graduate student office.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Basically any medical type show or movie] when they say that the person lost a lot of blood why cant they just put some of their blood on the baggie that hangs upside down and boom blood recovered?

Edit: ppl seem to think that I mean to scoop up the hood they lost or whatever and while the scenario is funny in my head lol I meant that use the blood that hospitals have (ya know those bags of blood in movies and such) and put the baggie on an IV (in place where those clear bags of liquid r hanging upside down)

[Assistant]
People don't just lose blood randomly, it usually means that they have some kind of wound, so giving them new blood is pointless until that wound is closed.

If someone loses alot of blood than that means they must have a lot of wounds, maybe even internal ones, which makes it harder to close them all.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
ELI5: What actually makes a food healthy/unhealthy? Are all processed foods automatically unhealthy?

Obviously low-calorie and low-carb are different than healthy, but they are much easier to identify when reading a nutritional label. What should someone be looking out for to still eat (relatively) healthy without only eating raw veggies?

[Assistant]
I wouldn't think of any single item being healthy / unhealthy. (Besides obvious candidates like empty calories such as certain sweets)

Think about what you are eating as a whole. The best diet is the one that

a) gets you the calories that you need including those you'll burn

b) gets you all the recommended nutrients

c) doesn't give you excessive amounts of anything.

d) obviously as little as possible downright harmful substances like alcohol

Wether you get there by eating mostly vegetables or yoghurt, frankly doesn't matter.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[2001: A Space Odyssey] What would have happened if HAL had arrived at Jupiter without any humans aboard?

Was the monolith eager to deal with artificial sentience? Would it view HAL 9000 as the ambassador of Earth, or just tell him to come back and bring some meat-sacks next time?

[Assistant] Well, spoilers ahoy, but in 2010, the alien have absolutely no problem dealing with HAL, and elevate him along with David Bowman, so probably they make no distinction between evolved sentience and designed sentience.  Were he the original one to encounter the monolith, it would most probably treat him as it treated Bowman.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[DC] Why is it that Superman tends to get flung the same distance as Batman if they're fighting the same opponent?

If someone's strong enough to throw Superman across a room, wouldn't they be strong enough to rip Batman to shreds with a finger? Or does Superman have roughly the same mass as a human, just with much more durability and strength?

Citation: last battle in last episode of Justice League Unlimited. I realize comics/movies/cartoons each have their own separate canon, but answers for each are welcome.

[Assistant] Superman seems to have the amount of mass we'd expect from his appearance if he were human and not kryptonian. Notice that when he's Clark Kent his body does not affect the environment in any noticeable way. Contrast this with FMA's Envy, whose human form still retains the mass of his humongous true form and sinks into the ground with every step and bends the metal railings he steps on. Also, as a young Clark Kent, his parents were able to treat him like any human child, the farm isn't buffed structurally or anything.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Does gravity still 'work' when scaled down?

Assuming these numbers are right:
Humans are 668 times bigger than ants and that the circumference of the earth is 40,075km
Then if we made planet with a circumference (and everything else) scaled down to make ants the same size as humans, a planet with a circumference of 72km. Would this planet have enough gravitational pull on the ants to keep them on (lets imagine that ants are just like humans and cant climb and stick onto stuff)?
And also would this planet be strong enough to keep 70% of its area covered with water using gravity? If not why?

[Assistant] a human is 20 million times bigger than an ant when talking about mass which is the property gravity is dependent on(as well as distance between two objects) To answer you question, in the middle of space with no other masses to interfere, any two masses will attract, no matter how small, so yes a tiny 'planet' could hold ants onto it or water on its surface.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why do athletes spit out their drinks instead of swallowing it?

[Assistant]
Water, especially cold water, can cause painful stomach cramps during intense exercise.

Rinsing the mouth gets rid of the dryness, and hydrates a little.

In most cases, the athlete knows that drinking water will be available after their cool down, and rinse their mouths so they don't get cotton mouth or breathing problems.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Futurama] Did Zapp actually open up to Leela when they slept together or was it just a ploy?

In the first episode where the ship is impounded and the crew jailed for rescuing animals on a doomed world, Zapp invites Leela to his quarters to seduce her. When she rebuffs him he seems to break down and start crying, exposing his confident ladies man persona as nothing but a front to hide from the horrible loneliness he feels trapped on a ship with no female company. She gives him some pity sex and throughout the rest of the series including right after they wake up he never seems emotionally vulnerable again, slipping right back into his wanna-be Kirk delusions, no matter how coldly, frequently, or harshly she rebuffs him from then on.

Was it all just a manipulative act on his part or did losing his virginity remove any of his extremely well deserved self doubt?

[Assistant] I think for it to be a ploy, Zapp would need to understand that his normal demeanour is so very off-putting to women, especially Leela. He is nowhere near self aware enough to do that, and nothing he said was untrue, so its more likely that was genuine vulnerability, but his ego just let him delude himself that she fell because of his usual act.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Columbo] Columbo has wrapped his investigation, Im in the clear, but he turns before leaving and says "just one more thing"... am I definitely goin down?!?

I did do it. He is in full coat and cigar. I am not wearing an ascot, or fancy suit.

[Assistant] that depends. did you start out being all friendly and helpful when he first turned up, but slowly got more and more tetchy and annoyed as he kept interrupting you at your place of work? did you start wearing a waistcoat and saying things like *"now look here columbo"*? because that's when you really know you're fucked.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] Why would the Galactic Empire abandon Clone Troopers?

Like the Spartans of Ancient Greece, all Clone Troopers were adaptive, versatile, and reared from birth for combat - unlike the Stormtroopers, who were either recruited, conscripted, or cloned from less efficient genetic sources.

The base genome for Clone Troopers was Jango Fett. With the exception of the 501st Legion, Clones eventually faded from the Empire's military force.

Why didn't the Empire reboot the Cloning Facilities to produce more?

[Assistant]
They're super duper expensive, and also it's easier to control the galaxy when you sign up a massive portion of its population as your enforcers rather than to create *more* people to enforce those already.

Plus the emperor knows first hand that creating soldiers in a lab leaves the opportunity to secretly implant a chip in their brain to cause them to go haywire at a moment's notice. Probably safer to rely on natural born people and motivate them with money and benefits than to risk something like that backfiring on him.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
If a gay person believes in a religion that forbids homosexuality, is it a moral failing of the church or the person?

Let's assume that the person truly believes in a church that forbids homosexuality, yet the person still practices their sexuality. Regardless of whether homsexuality is wrong or not, outside of any religion, would the person be committing an immoral act by practicing their homosexuality?

Has there been any writing on this subject (I guess a moral general question would be is it okay to act against one's beliefs)?

[Assistant] That depends very strongly on whether their beliefs are right or not obviously. That's kind of the cornerstone of how to determine what things are immoral, yet your question deliberately says to answer as if this didn't matter. Some theories will say that it is wrong, probably especially virtue theories to do what one believes is wrong. But the picture changes based on whether the act itself is.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5:whats the difference between a nuke, an atomic bomb, and a hydrogen bomb?

[Assistant]
The first two are synonyms for all bombs using the energy gained from the fission of uranium or plutonium. A hydrogen bomb is a nuclear bomb, but it additionally uses energy gained from nuclear fusion of deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) and lithium to increase its power.

Basically all nuclear bombs today are hydrogen bombs, since they have far more bang for the buck - literally.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Harry Potter] are you telling me that not a single person was worried about Harrys mistreatment? Like CPS (or the UK equivalent) was never threatened in some way? The Dursleys couldnt have been that good at keeping Harry quiet.

[Assistant] They never did anything to him that would leave obvious red flags for  the Department for Education (which runs the equivalent to CPS in England and Wales) to investigate. He was skinny but not starved, unhappy but not obviously acting out, a victim of bullying but not bruised or beaten. Unfortunately abuse like this is common even in countries with robust child safety systems.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[LOTR] Why wasn't Rohan a province of othod in Rhovanion?

Rohan was given as a gift from Gondor to people from othod who came to help Gondor during war. Why wouldn't Rohan be added to the Kingdom of othod instead of becoming a separate country? Something like how Alaska is part of the USA, East and West Pakistan, or the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.

[Assistant] Because they didn't have the resources to maintain a connection between the two ends of the Misty Mountains that their kingdom would have been spread across and it was feasible to relocate the entire population to the far more hospitable land of Calenardhon.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Kung Fu Panda] If Shen threatened master Ox and master Croc that he would turn the weapons against the city if they didn't surrender, why didn't he do the same for Po and the Furious Five if he was aware that they were in the city?

It just seems to me that he missed a pretty simple solution for his problems. It could have also gave more stake to the story and more character to Shen.

[Assistant]
His fate was tied to Po. Everything he did was to try and spite his destiny, that he'd be stopped by a panda. It wasn't enough to make Po surrender, he needed to prove the fortune teller wrong. But, like the theme of the Kung Fu Panda stories keeps reiterating, *One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it*.

Shen *had* to win. He was ready to kill Po as soon as he met him (captive in the tower), and then underestimated him as a fool (because he wasn't what he expected). He only barely escaped, and destroyed his tower trying (and failing) to kill Po. His destiny was looming closer and closer, and his pride couldn't take it. He couldn't just *beat* Po, he had to be *right*, he had to *win*. All of his sacrifices and all the terrible things he did had to be *right*.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[General] Almost always, if a character has a dual personalities, it is the evil side which is super-powered. Are there any cases where someone has a super-powered good side?

'Super-powered Evil Side' is a trope, where a character has two (or more) personalities: the good side being more-or-less normal with no powers, while the evil/darker side being super-powered. Are there any examples of the opposite?

[Assistant] Might not  really count but in the classic anime Yu yu Hakusho, the villain of the chapter black arc was a man named Sensui. He had six other personalities, each with their own strengths and techniques. At least 2 of those personalities weren't very nice people with one of them even being borderline sadistic. His original personality, though, was affable, noble,  and not really evil; just misguided in a way that even the heroes understood. His original personality was also the most powerful. It served as his "final form" so to speak.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
My supervisor wants me to modify an article we are writing in a way I don't completely agree with.

As part of my work for my PhD I wrote a scientific article.

I am the first author, my supervisor and two other staff members at my university are authors, too. I wrote 95% of the article by myself, then I sent the draft to my supervisor and the co-authors and everyone proposed some changes.

A section of the paper I wrote has been introduced after I had a discussion with professor X, at university Y (not my university). Even if I didn't see it at first, now I am convinced that the additional treatment in this section is needed to be able to get realistic data. If we don't do it, then we are not modeling a fundamental feature of the system.

The point is that this section doesn't make our theoretical predictions any better, in most cases they are even worse. I addressed this point in the paper, and I concluded that another approximation we are doing is critical: that one must be the culprit for the disagreement. There is also consensus in scientific literature that the aforementioned approximation is critical. It's too complicated to remove this approximation, it's very commonly used but in some cases it might fail.

I proposed that we keep the section, motivating my proposal: I am analyzing a fundamental feature of the system. If we neglect that we may have a slightly better agreement by pure chance, but our description is farther away from reality.

My supervisor has become really aggressive at this point. Usually he is very warm and welcoming in his emails, now he's been criticizing me for everything, like the indentation of my LaTeX code, or the legends of my plots. He made fun of me for being "emotionally attached" to my calculations, even if they are (in his opinion) useless for the paper. We discussed a lot about it, and in the end I wanted to keep the section, while, on the other side, the other three co-authors wanted to remove it; they didn't have any scientific reason to trash it.

My supervisor sent to me this morning his final draft, and the section is nowhere to be found. He wants a comment on that, and then we can submit it.

What do I do? I think that my paper is quite decent even without that section, however I feel like we are not being 100% honest. I explained very clearly my point of view, many times, they know that I don't agree with them; I feel like I cannot insist again on keeping the section. Also, we informally voted on that section and it's me (a PhD student) against a professor and two staff members.

I see no way I could further insist: the general feeling is that we discussed, and my proposal lost...

Also I am now visiting professor X, who suggested the improvement, at university Y; he asked for a preprint of my article. I am a little bit ashamed of showing it to him because he is mentioned in the "Acknowledgements" section, and we thank him for "fruitful discussion", even if now we are completely neglecting his remarks.

Also I have to give a seminar soon at university Y. Am I going to present something I am not fully convinced of? Or am I going to contradict my most recent article in my talk?

Sorry for the wall of text, thank you for your answers!

[Assistant]
Give them a chance. You are an apprentice now, they are masters. The very idea of apprenticeship is that you look at another person, a more experienced person, and try to remember what worked for them, and what did not. Once you are a master yourself, you'll play by your own rules.

Remember their decisions, and their rationale for making these decisions. Later, try to understand whether these decisions were right or not. For example, one of the reviewers may ask exactly for a discussion like that, so you'll bring it back. Remember all that, so that you could decide for yourself in the future whether it was a right approach, and whether you'll follow it when you are independent.

Another option, consider publishing this piece as a micro-article of its own. Is it possible? Pick a low-impact factor journal, add a bit of data here and there, and publish it separately (a separate paper, but keeping your supervisor as a co-author, probably, unless they explicitly bid out of it). Oftentimes it makes a paper better if it is published in pieces.

Science is not only about getting an interesting result, it's also about popularizing this result, and explaining it to people. Explaining things in a way that makes them understood is as important in science as getting the results themselves. And for reaching this goal sometimes, for the sake of clarity, you have to streamline your work, sacrificing some tangentials. Most successful researchers often manage to turn these tangentials in projects / publications of their own, but that's a separate story.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
CMV: Prostitution Should Be Legal

Prostitution as defined by the consensual practice or occupation of engaging in sexual activity with someone for payment should be legal. Since things should generally be legal unless there is a reason for them to not be, the best way to change my view is by providing a convincing reason for why it should be illegal.

**To address common counter arguments:**

**"Prostitution is not a victimless crime, women are forced into it due to economic reasons. After all no one says they want to be a prostitute when they grow up."**

It is true that no one says they want to end up as a prostitute. It is also true that no one wants to be homeless or work long hours earning minimum wage when they grow up. The prostitute always has the option to be homeless instead. And if they don't have that option anymore due to things like pimps forcing them to stay as prostitutes then it is no longer prostitution - it's rape. By legalizing prostitution it actually gives women more protection because if they do begin to be forced to do things that they don't consent to they can turn to law enforcement and the legal system for help. Currently they don't have this option because they risk prosecution for prostitution themselves or losing their source of livelihood.

**"Prostitution puts women at a significantly greater risk of violence."**

Jobs with a greater risk of violence already exist - being a pizza delivery driver puts you at one of the highest risks of being shot on the job.

Additionally by legalizing prostitution it would make it much safer. The industry could be regulated to create minimum safety standards, safe and monitored facilities could be created, etc.

**"Prostitution is morally wrong."**

Not only should morality and legality be separate issues, but from a secular standpoint what even makes it wrong? Regardless though the law and your morality should be kept separate otherwise you end up with prohibition.

**"Prostitution spreads HIV/AIDS."**

Studies have shown that legalizing prostitution actually reduces HIV infection rates and countries with legal prostitution have a much lower risk of HIV with prostitution. The reasoning behind this is again that prostitutes will have more legal options available to them. Legislation could even be created to heavily penalized individuals spreading STD's through prostitution or with a prostitute to further reduce the risk of STD infections in prostitution.

All this isn't even mentioning the economic benefits of legalized prostitution. Legalized prostitution would provide an economic boost similar to the economic boost seen from states that have legalized marijuana.

Help me change my view, there just doesn't seem to be any reason against the legalization of prostitution with many reasons for it.

[Assistant] Are you suggesting prostitution should be legal as in decriminalized (it's simply no longer illegal, and whoever wants to can just do it) or that it be legal as in legalized (made into a regulated industry, where transactions outside that sphere of regulation are still illegal)?


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Harry Potter] What would Dark Lords from other Hogwarts houses be like?

The image of Grindelwald and Voldemort, and to a certain extent Lucius Malfoy and even Severus Snape, seems to have heavily influenced the concept of what a Dark Lord is. They appear to be egotistical, brutally ambitious, and extremely fond of unforgivable curses. In order words, textbook Slytherins.

But everyone, regardless of house, has the capacity for evil, even supreme evil. So what does it look like when a representative from Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, or even Hufflepuff takes the top Dark Wizard spot? What do their methods look like, and how are they different from Slytherin Dark Lords?

These need not be direct examples of known wizards gone bad; I'm more interested in your thoughts on what happens when the attributes prized by the other houses are twisted to evil purposes.

[Assistant]
These are examples, not guaranteed 100% would-be-like-this.

Gryffindor - Charismatic warhawk that wants to end the statute of secrecy and conquer the muggle world by force.

Ravenclaw - Schemer, plotter, amoral experimenter, or some combination of the three.

Hufflepuff - Radical that gathers together nonhumans and muggle-borns to overthrow the Pureblood families, the Ministry of Magic, or both. Alternatively, a wizard that works hard their entire life, has one bad day, and snaps.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] What process occurs for a light bulb to be burnt out?

[Assistant] For an incandescent lamp, the tungsten filament evaporates slowly when hot. It is very thin to begin with and parts which are even thinner get hotter and evaporate even faster. Eventually the filament opens because it is just too thin. That often happens when switching the bulb on because the current is much higher for a very brief time. Halogen bulbs slow down the evaporation by redepositing evaporated tungsten onto the filament.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why is it so hard to catch/arrest/block spam/scam callers?

[Assistant] Because they operate in jurisdictions that have little to no resources or interest in doing something about it, like China or India. Both countries have significantly bigger problems affecting their citizens to actually do something that potentially affects a citizen of another across the world.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Why do diabetes patients sometimes need their limbs amputated?

Pretty much self explanatory. What happens to their limbs that causes them to be totally unsalvageable?

[Assistant] Diabetes causes high levels of glucose in the blood, which can damage just about any organ in the body. It affects the nerves in the feet, a condition called peripheral neuropathy, so patients lose sensation. It also causes vascular changes, hardening and clogging the arteries so the feet don't get enough oxygenated blood. That means patients might not feel an irritation until it breaks the skin, allowing bacteria to enter the wound. Because the blood supply is poor, the body has a diminished capacity to fight the infection, so the wounds don't heal.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[MCU] Are the Infinity Gems attracted to Earth for some reason, or are they simply attracted to each other and Earth happens to be the point of convergence?

Asgardian library intern here.

We don't have a library anymore thanks to some recent stuff that would take too long to explain. New king wants everything we have on the Infinity Gems, which (if you don't know) are essentially little pieces of what existed before... well, everything. I've been sifting through what we have left and I can't help but notice a pattern.

Asgard has been tracking these stones as their incidents tend to draw a bit of attention. Almost every recent incident of the Infinity Gems has led them on a path through Midgard, or as most of you may know it, the planet Earth. I find this peculiar. Our own politics have intertwined with two of the gems, the Tesseract and the Aether, both of which caused large incidents that concluded in New York and London, respectively. Loki's mind gem, once a part of his scepter, caused a large-scale incident with a self-aware security system in Sokovia. At first I assumed the stones might be tied somehow to Asgard, since these events were so connected to Thor and Loki. More evidence has shifted my theory.

I overheard Thor himself speaking of a similar aura he felt when he encountered the sorcerer, Doctor Steven Strange. He suspects there may be another stone in his possession, and this would match up with scattered reports of a strange event in Hong Kong; though our scientists involved in Midgard studies were not able to find any direct evidence. Some ancient texts in the old library pointed towards a very powerful artifact of an ancient mystic order that could potentially be an Infinity Stone. If so, it has been located on Earth for a very long time and without intervention from Asgard. We are waiting to ask Thor if the object looks familiar to him from his visit with Doctor Strange; the object is eye-shaped and that is currently a sore topic.

The only stone we have tracked that hasn't found it's way to Earth is an Infinity Gem referred to as The Orb, which sparked a massive battle between the Kree and the Nova Corps. Interestingly, however, it does appear that the conflict was solved by a group of mercenaries that was led by an Earthling named Peter Quill. This, for me, was too much of a coincidence as Earthlings are extremely rare in that part of the galaxy.

My hypothesis is that these Infinity Gems may have a connection to the Earth in some meaningful way. Every Infinity incident thus far has touched the Earth, or someone from it. My other thought was that perhaps the stones actively seek out one another, desiring to be linked due to some cosmic energy shared between them. Perhaps the Earth was just a convenient meeting spot for fate once a few of the stones happened to converge there? Could the stones be somewhat sentient in that case? Did The Orb intend for Peter Quill to reunite it with the other gems?

I need more information to confirm my theories, and much of what we had has been destroyed. If anyone out there has relevant information, it seems to be increasingly urgent that we solve the mysteries of these stones before they cause more massively destructive incidents on Midgard. There is a chance Asgardians will be calling Midgard home in the near future and we would all prefer that no spellbound robots drop our continent out of the sky (long story).

Can anyone aid us in our research?

[Assistant]
Well, Odin (possibly) used the Space Stone to *make* the Rainbow Bridge, then hid it away on Earth, one of the Nine Realms of his domain.

Also hidden on Earth was the Aether, or Reality Stone. Since this was hidden by Bor, Odin's father, and was done so secretly, nobody knew. But, as one of the Nine Realms, it made a suitable hiding place.

Basically, both Odin and his father thought Midgard was the best of the Nine Realms for hiding an Infinity Stone on.

We don't know how the Time Stone ended up on Earth. The Eye of Agamotto was made by the first Sorcerer Supreme, "thousands of years ago". We don't know if that was pre-Bor or post-Bor, but it seems unrelated.

The Mind Stone was sent to Earth specifically *because* the Space Stone was there, in an attempt by Thanos to claim it without showing his hand.

The Power Stone, thus far, has never been to Earth (as far as we know), but has been touched by a half-Earthling.

It's possible that this is Fate, guiding all the Stones towards a certain place in space and time. Perhaps they are destined to be together again, at least once.

But most of them have a good reason for being there, instead of anywhere else in the Universe.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: at the molecular level what is the difference between a dominant gene and a recessive gene? What makes the dominant gene dominant and the recessive gene recessive?

[Assistant]
It depends, but in a simple case if it takes multiple pieces to make the the final time e.g multiple protein "subunits" to make a "protein-complex" then if any of them are defective, the whole thing doesn't work.  Think of car tires where one or two of the four tires is flat (from the mutant gene) and the other two or three are fine.  The care is not going anywhere with flat tires, so having one good gene does not help.  Other genes/proteins work solo and if you have one bad copy the other good copy *might* be able to make up for it.  Just one example.

Another way is if you have half as much of the good protein is that enough?  If yes then the mutation is recessive, if not it is dominant.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Legend of Zelda OoT] How did Ganondorf build his doom fortress above the old Hyrule Castle anyway?

[Assistant]
Well it's fair to say that the workmen couldn't possibly have done it- in the years between young and adult link, all they managed to achieve was completion of a few Kakariko buildings and the fixing of a bridge. Although some humans, such as Ingo had sided with Gannondorf, it still seems unlikely they could have constructed something of that magnitude judging from their ineptitude (as above) and the fact that the people had been driven from Hyrule Castle Town.

The Gerudo may have done the work, but they are never seen outside of Gerudo Valley/the desert. But according to someone in Castle Town, they did visit at times looking for boyfriends. Gannon's fortress doesn't at all match the one in the desert. It seems most likely they had little to no involvement, as all their manpower is devoted to guarding their own land.

The Gorons probably had the capacity, but they appear to have been otherwise occupied in the mountain, though eventually imprisoned, they weren't necessarily enslaved. They gave no indication to Link that they had been used as slave workers.

I posit that the fortress modifications must have been created by his design and oversight at the hands of what Link would view as 'monsters' and 'enemies'. Whether skeletal warriors of the field, or the redead living in the castle town in the later stage, or maybe moblins or some other bosses or phantoms, Gannondorf had a *massive* amount of manpower and resources at his disposal.

Seeing as he had so many servants to fight for him, it would be only logical that he utilise them in other forms of service, such as construction.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: When you cross two beams of light, e.g. from flashlights, why are they not interfering with each other at all?

[Assistant]
***TL;DR:*** *Because light isn't really a physical beam so much as a group of little packets of energy that don't interact with each other.*

Imagine you and a friend are standing on a 10 foot wide diagram of a clock, with you at 6 and them at 3, both facing the middle. You both grab a handful of fine but very heavy sand. At a count of three, you both fling and spray your sand toward the centre... and the two clouds of sand pretty much pass through each other. There might be a collision or two that knocks a few grains of sand out of their path, but almost all of the sand would go through cleanly and end up at the other side of the clock.

Light is *a little* like that sand, except the photons (really, little packets of energy) are INCREDIBLY small and moving INCREDIBLY fast. So the odds that two particles are going to impact each other are almost impossibly slim. So the light in general goes through rather than be impacted by a collision.

But where the sand analogy fails is that light 'particles' don't really "collide" or interact anyway, not unless they're under very special circumstances. You can have one photon "touching" another and it doesn't really do anything to either. So off they go, not changing direction or anything, until they eventually blind a deer or annoy a light-sleeping neighbor.

{**edit** to include a second analogy for two photons intersecting}

Toss two pebbles into a calm pond at the same time, about two feet apart, and watch the ripples. You'll see they intersect and touch, but afterward just keep on going. Those two waves don't really CHANGE each other - their direction and speed remains exactly as it was *before* they hit as it does afterward. Same with photons - they'd just pass right through each other and keep going, unchanged from previous.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Why do objects of varying mass accelerate towards the earth's surface at the same rate?

[Assistant]
Heavier things need more force to move them than light things do.
Heavier things experience more force from gravity than light things do.

It turns out that these *exactly balance out*. The extra force you get for being heavier is exactly the amount you need to cancel out the fact that you need more force to accelerate because you're heavier. So everything accelerates at the same rate.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] To avoid the Rule of Two, can a Sith Lord choose NOT to get an apprentice?

Was there any Sith Lord in Legends or Canon that did this?

[Assistant]
Absolutely not! Lets hear it from the man himself.

> Choose someone as a successor and you will inevitably be succeeded.
Choose someone hungrier and you will be devoured.
Choose someone quicker and you won't dodge the blade at your back.
Choose someone with more patience and you won't block the blade at your throat.
Choose someone more devious and you'll hold the blade that kills you.
Choose someone more clever and you'll never know your end.
Despite these cautions, an apprentice is essential. A Master without an apprentice is a Master of nothing.

-Darth Sidious

The constant one-upping and treachery is there to make sure the Sith constantly evolve and grow stronger! If you cant train an apprentice good enough to kill you, youve failed as a Sith Lord!


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] Why can influenza infect a person multiple times, but once a person is infected with measles, they gain lifelong immunity?

[Assistant] Primarily because there are multiple strains of influenza that circulate differentially depending on a variety of factors. Influenza also has a high rate of mutation, which the means the prevalent strains circulating at in given season have changed enough that your immune system doesn't recognize them. Also, immunity to pathogens varies significantly depending on the antigen molecules (usually) on the surface of the virus or bacteria: Some are more easily recognized by the immune system than others.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
What ethics would you say the (anti)superhero Rorshach is following?

Was pondering that yesterday and I am not sure. He is wiling to torture "underworld" people to get information, so that points towards a utilitarian. (The criminal's pain caused by me breaking his fingers is outweighed by the net gain of happiness by me stopping a criminal plot with the information I got from him.)

But at the end of the series/movie, he is willing to risk the fate of the entire world rather than letting a criminal go. This seems very deontological to me. (Ozymandiaz saves the world from nuclear war by criminal acts; Rorshach wants to expose the plot, thus reactivating the potential for nuclear war. Ozymandiaz plot is btw a clearcut utilitarian scheme; sacrifice a few million lives to protect the lives of the entire planet.)

So I'm not sure about it. I wonder if there were some ethically competent people that knows the Rorshach character. It is off course a possibility the character is not coherent, but the series reads like he is.

[Assistant]
Rorschach believes that those who have "sinned", in his judgement, deserve punishment. So, aptly, he's a desert retributivist. This doesn't conflict with his hard-line deontology; in fact, it compliments it. This is why, in his mind, he's able to torture people for information without contradicting his strong, rules-based morality. The people he tortures *deserve* to be tortured, to him.

He's an extreme, diseased manifestation of deontological justice. He was meant to take the Batman vigilante archetype to its natural conclusion, which is that of a conspiratorial fascist.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: how does sword swallowing work?

[Assistant]
It's one part illusion and one part a lot of practice.

First of all, they don't use battle-ready swords. They're not at all as sharp as a weapon should be. Half of of the trick is making them *look* like swords.

Second, your neck needs to be straight as an arrow and, after a lot of practice, you can just kind of slide it down and hold it down.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
would Solar Panels work if our Star was a Red Dwarf instead?

Just curious if we visited a red dwarf system and decided to setup a station there, could we gather solar energy via solar panels (photons) like our Sun?

[Assistant]
We would likely need a different set of solar cells to get the best efficiency around a red dwarf.  The output of such a star is considerably less than our Sun and the spectrum is shifted to the infrared.  Our current solar cells are tailored to work with mostly visible light, that is the photons in the visible spectrum have the right amount of energy to excite an electron across the band gap and generate the exciton needed for the whole concept to work.  If you just hit our normal cells with infrared light the incoming photons would not have enough energy to bump up the electrons over the band gap and you would get no current flowing.

We should be able to build solar cells that work though, and ours would work to some degree as there are still photons in the visible region but the amounts will be significantly less.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Do octopuses have a dominant right or left side?

I'm drawing an octopus right now, and I'd really like to know.

[Assistant] From "The Soul of an Octopus" by Sy Montgomery: "University of Vienna researcher Ruth Byrne reported that her captive octopuses always choose a favorite arm to explore new objects or mazes... Tank-bound octopuses, at least, are known to have a dominant eye, and Byrne thinks this dominance might be transferred to the front limb nearest the favored eye." However, as others have stated in the thread, all eight limbs act somewhat autonomously. The author in this section actually refers to the possibility of "bold" and "shy" arms, describing how some arms will display curiosity when presented with a new object while others retreat.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Animal Crossing] Is Tom Nook actually as bad as he's made out to be?

So, I'm no animal crossing expert.

But my friends who play it are pretty evenly divided between "loan-shark slum lord" and "fair and compassionate businessman who's unfairly demonized". And the fandom discussions I've seen are basically the same.

So now, as someone who know little about the game, I'm curious. *Is* Nook the corrupt corporate banker pop culture portrays him as? Or is he just a hard-working raccoon who's the victim of cruel slander?

[Assistant]
Tom Nook has, for decades, provided interest free loans with no due date, to complete strangers. In the past, he has offered employment (and training). In one of his earliest investments, Nook built four houses, and he was willing to basically give them away to the first four strangers to ask.

Nook is a capitalist in what is (effectively) a post scarcity society. Most of his goods are QoL, not necessities. He runs his business for fun, and donates most of his profits to an orphanage.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5: Why is it that sitting for extended periods can cause blood clots but laying down sleeping for 6-8 hours a night doesnt?

[Assistant] When you sleep your blood does not have to flow upwards, your body is mostly straight and you are still moving alot in sleep. So If your leg is broken and you can't move a little your chance developing cloths is higher. That's why they give you shots in hospital every day. While sitting the legs aren't moved much, they are angled and the blood have to flow upwards.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] ELI5 why can babies have water in formula but not actual water before 6 months?

[Assistant]
Think of a person as being made out of chemicals.

A baby is a *very small* pile of chemicals.

Basically, you don't want to dilute the baby too much.

Breast-milk/formula contains relevant chemicals so that a baby stays roughly stable, but pure water will dilute them.

(More details would include stuff like electrolytes and stomach size and osmosis and so on.)


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[User] [Who Framed Roger Rabbit?] so, is Toontown the only place where toons live, or are there other towns and cities where toons inhabit the place, or are there towns or cities where humans and toon live side by side?

[Assistant]
Toontown is basicly a Ghetto for the Toons of LA. It can be seen as a Toon Version of Harlem, but as a Whole Town with it's own Low- and Hight Income Neighborhoods.

Also noteworthy is the fact that Toons seem to only work in the Entertainment Industry.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[X-Men] If Wolverine fell into a pit of lava, would he survive?

I was thinking about this the other night, his bones are covered in Adamantium and Adamantium is not able to be melted again once it hardens.  If Wolverine only needs 1 cell to regenerate(if I remember correctly), then all of this bones would be safe because his bones are covered in Adamantium, but if he is in a pit of lava wouldn't all of his flesh, muscle and organs be destroyed?  I know he has survived an atomic blast, but falling in lava I think would more destructive because it is a "liquid" and is constantly burning him.

If someone were to pull him out could he survive or would he out heal the burning and be able to get out?  Also, would he be regenerating enough that he would be conscious but not able to move and keep feeling the pain of the lava essentially burning him over and over?

[Assistant] His skeleton once survived a nuke(ish) and he regenerated from that, but you gotta pick up the skeleton from the lava first. In the lava he wouldnt regenerate fast enought, it would burn away as soon it grew back. He can regenerate from bones only, as there still is stuff inside the bones.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
Why is it that the moons gravity is able to direct masses of water in different directions but yet we, ourselves cannot physically feel the affect of the moon's gravity?

^

[Assistant] Tidal forces are essentially due to the *difference* in the gravitational field between two sides of a body. If you consider the difference in the moon's influence between our head and our feet, it is essentially null. If you consider the difference between one side of the Earth and the other, it starts to become significant.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User] [Hellraiser] It seems like everyone who becomes a cenobite ends up enjoying it. Are there any downsides to being a cenobite?

[Assistant] Once that level of pain is fun, not much else is going to elicit any emotional response. Eventually you'll have to put fish hooks through the 36 killing points just to get enough motivation to get up in the morning. That's very time consuming and makes putting your shirt on inconvenient as heck, what with all the snags.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[Star Wars] Why were the jedi council/ jedi as a whole ok with leading, training and organising an army of slaves?

Clones were literally bred to be disposable soldiers. Several high ranking jedi noted that they could feel that the clones were individuals in the force. So why were they so ready to use slaves to fight the war against the seperatists? Since when were the jedi willing to choose the lesser evil?

[Assistant]
The aren't.

They weren't even ok with leading armies in be first place. But they were left no choice when Dooku, a confirmed Sith, surprised their ass with countless Droid forces. Jedi also treated their clone forces with respect and embraced their diversity and personalities.


[System] Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:

[User]
[LOTR] Had Gandolf and Saruman worked together, would it have been possible to break Sauron's control of the One Ring?

Let's say that instead of going to Mount Doom, the fellowship agrees that it is a fantastic idea to just bring the ring to Saruman. Upon arriving, Saruman has Frodo place the ring in a specially prepared container that he and Gandolf worked together to create with the intention of insulating them from the ring while they work on a plan. The fellowship then aids the two wizards as they work together to find a way to  subjugate the ring so that they can use it without succumbing to it's control. Assume that Frodo is sufficiently monitored to prevent him from trying to take the ring as a result of the corruption he has already been subjected to. Is there any chance of the outcome being something other than the ring easily corrupting Saruman and Gandolf?

[Assistant]
No there isnt. That was why Gandalf and Elrond called together the council in the first place.  There was no power in Middle Earth that both had the power to overcome the ring and be trusted to actually help.

Tom Bombadil has the power but not the interest.  Smaug had he been alive might have been tricked into melting the ring (by incinerating the unfortunate bearer) but was no guarantee of success.  The next most powerful being aside from Sauron himself was Galadriel who admitted that she would have fallen under its sway.

Thats the insidious nature of the one ring; it twists your intentions to bad ends, it feeds your ego and will to dominate.  The power works faster the more powerful you personally are. Any attempts to uncouple Saurons essence from the ring would have met in failure and ruin.  Any being capable of such a feat would have nothing to fear from Sauron himself and the first age is a hard lesson on what happens when such beings strode Middle Earth.

Even sailing west with the ring would have ended In failure.  The gods would not let that viper into their house.

Remember that the wizards power wasnt in raw might but in wisdom.  Originally they were beings not much different than what Sauron was but they willingly gave that up because the Valar learned that the people of Middle Earth already had the ability to save themselves, they just needed someone to show them the way.