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

[User] (ELI5) What is it about Taiwan that makes it a good spot to produce computer chips?

[Assistant]
Intense prior investment.

High tech manufacturing really relies on having an experienced workforce and well developed facilities. Both of those require time and money.

Many companies offloaded their electronics manufacturing into Taiwan due to cheaper labour and utilities in the past. Now Taiwanese companies have the people, the knowhow, the facilities and the money to both do what others do but cheaper (due to economy of scale and experience) AND innovate beyond that.

To catch up, others need to put in exactly as much human and monetary investment as Taiwan already had to this date, but most likely without seeing profit for decades (because they can buy from a cheaper, trustworthy source, i.e. Taiwan).

Of course, it still is worth doing by nations for matters like supply independence etc. But business-wise, it makes sense to buy from Taiwan.


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

[User]
CMV: I think FIFA should keep the 2022 World Cup in Qatar

I don't see that much wrong with it. It is promoting tourism to the middle east and raises awareness for the developing country of Qatar, much like South Africa did. As well, it gives the Qatar National Team a chance to compete in the World Cup. I feel economically it is beneficial for both Fifa and Qatar. 2022 is a long way from now, and Qatar has promised that it would be able to fix the problem with heat using a stadium wide cooling system.

I'm also excited to see all the modern technology that will be implemented into this World Cup. Also, I feel it would be a waste of money and time if the World Cup was moved somewhere else. Construction has already started and countries have already moved on to preparing bids for another World Cup. A sudden change of location could be disastrous for certain countries.

Finally, in the end, we go to and watch the World Cup because football is football. There should be more time spent focusing on the emergence of stars in the World Cup, how teams can adapt to weather, how today's young stars will play in their prime.

With all this said, change my view!

[Assistant]
>I don't see that much wrong with it

People are dying to make it happen. Not a small number that you could put down as an inevitable consequence of hosting such a big event but hundreds of people.

Qatar is not a footballing nation, they have never previously qualified for a World Cup. Why should money allow them to host such a prestigious event?

> Construction has already started and countries have already moved on to preparing bids for another World Cup. A sudden change of location could be disastrous for certain countries.

When Colombia pulled out of hosting the 1986 World Cup, Mexico won the bid in 1983 and were able to put on a good world cup. With 7 years to go there is no reason a country like the United States, Mexico or Morocco couldn't step in to host.


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

[User]
ELI5: What do we ACTUALLY know about anything regarding galaxies outside of the Milky Way?

And how the fuck do we know it?

[Assistant]
We know whatever we can see. Some of what we know we know because we can *literally see it*, like with our own eyeballs through magnification. The rest comes from using machines to "see" light that our eyes aren't sensitive to, like radio.

So basically, we look, then we measure what we see, then we figure out what those measurements imply.

Fun fact: We know far *less* about our own galaxy and its neighbors than we know about galaxies tens of millions of light-years away. Why? Because we can *see* those far-away galaxies, while the up-close ones are obscured by nearby clutter. For instance, it was just discovered a few years ago that our own galaxy is even right now in the process of colliding with another galaxy which nobody ever knew was there. It was too close, too big-in-the-sky and too obscured by stuff in between for us to notice it until just a few years ago.


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

[User]
[40k] What if the entire Inquisiton declared war against Guilliman, the Custodes and the Space Marine chapters?

The Inquisition is pissed at Guilliman, and want any above-human dead. Can they do it?

[Assistant]
The Inquisition's already preciously thin organizational structure would crumble from within even if the Monodominants managed to acquire enough formal authority to do this. Radicals and lesser Puritans would refound the Inquisition under Imperial authority almost immediately, the Monodominants thus effectively excommunicating *themselves*. (Which, by the way, is hilarious.)

And if somehow the Monodominants managed to brainwash every single member of the Inquisition...no. They lack the necessary manpower by whole leagues. The Inquisition is a special forces and investigative body, not an army. The closest they've got is the loyalty of the Grey Knights, which is gonna get real awkward in this hypothetical.


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

[User] Why are teeth made of dentine and enamel and not bone?

[Assistant]
Because enamel is much harder than bone. If you had bones for teeth the would break much more often.

The down side is how long it takes to form enamel. this is why you have baby teeth. the whole time you have baby teeth your adult teeth are forming their enamel.


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

[User] [Star Trek] Dead red blood cells are what gives our feces its distinctive brown colour. Does this imply that Vulcan fecal matter will be a deep dark green? Or does their anatomy differ wildly to ours?

[Assistant]
Not really, what gives our faeces they brown colour is bilirubin which indeed is produced by degrading the heme part from hemoglobin but all the Fe gets absorbed before the bilirubin gets in to our digestive tract.

If the green colour of Vulcan blood stems from their version of hemoglobin just with coper instead of iron and they metabolise the heme part the same way there faeces would be exact the same colour because all copper got absorbed before the bilirubin got to the digestive tract.


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

[User]
ELI5: Can heart attacks happen randomly or are they always brought on by something?

And do they tend to be reoccurring?

[Assistant] Heart attacks, like all things, have a cause. A heart attack may appear random, but that's simply because you didn't see it coming. Heart attacks can be reoccurring, or they can be a once in a lifetime thing, it depends on numerous factors.


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

[User]
What determines when a viral infection is no longer contagious?

Covid-19 patients can test positive for up to months after being infected but the CDC guidelines state that the virus is most likely not contagious after 10 days. How is someone who still has detectable amounts of covid-19 in their nose or saliva no longer able to pass it on to someone else?

[Assistant] It's no longer contagious when you're not producing enough infectious particles in the airways needed to spread virus to another individual. Ebola virus has been found to replicate within the eye of long haul carriers but no evidence indicates these people are capable of spreading virus. If replication is localized to a protected niche then the chance of it aersolizing or spreading through bodily fluids (ebola) is low. Also, PCR methods only detect RNA so it doesn't tell you if infectious particles are being produced. Long haulers likely have infectious particles but not in areas that increase the chance of spread.


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

[User]
Can objects (such as wood) reach high temperatures without burning?

I read a bit about active charcoal and how it's produced, so I got interested in the following:

Does the wood only get heated (600-900 C) without necessarily burning? because burning wood creates ash, whilst active charcoal is from charcoal, which is not the same.

Or is it inevitable for a combustible object to burn at high temperatures?'

Edit: Additional info: To create active charcoal, wood is placed in an isolated fireproof container inside a hot system/fire with desired temperatures of 600-900 C for 4-6 hours.

[Assistant] For something to burn you need oxygen. If you were to keep wood at low oxygen and high temperatures, you'd get charcoal. Same goes for other materials. They'd breakdown or melt at high temperatures, but not burn because of the lack of oxygen.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the center axle on dump trucks used for? And what is it called? The only time I ever see them down is if they are loaded. But Ive seen them up with a full load too.

[Assistant]
Former dump  truck owner here.

The center lift axle increases load capacity so more, and / or heavier material can be carried without overloading the tires or axles when driving

It's especially the  front axle and tires at risk for overloading

But these lift axles make steering around turns more difficult. So the lift axle is raised before the truck goes into a sharper turn. If the load is lighter,  the lift axle is kept up all the time for driving ease.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Does Darth Vader poop?

[Assistant]
Well, he doesn't really eat. His life support suit feeds nutrients directly into his body. So his nutrient intake is pretty much 99.99% efficient, leading to a very small amount of waste. He has a pressurized colostomy canister where his solid waste is deposited in.

Also, you see all those mouse droids? They pretty much fetch his shit whenever his poop canister is full, and then they bring him a fresh one.


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

[User] ELI5: How hard is it for a sniper to shoot a moving target? (I'm thinking Kennedy)

[Assistant]
I mean, hitting a moving target is always difficult. That said, Kennedy was moving at a very slow and mostly constant speed. In addition, the book depository wasn't really that far away. According to Google, it was only like an 80 yard shot. Further, all of the noise from the parade meant that no one even noticed Oswald was shooting until Kennedy got hit; he missed his first shot, and then was still able to line up another like nothing happened.

So whether or not Oswald really shot Kennedy (I don't feel like getting into conspiracy theories), the alleged shot was totally plausible, and could have been done by just about anyone with moderate skill. It wouldn't have taken a professional sniper or anything like that.


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

[User]
I've done it! I've been accepted into college to pursue my dreams. Now how the heck do I apply for scholarships?

I'm a single mother that is working 3 jobs. It looks like I'm going to have to give up my full time job to go back to school so I'm trying to figure out what scholarships are available to me.

Does anyone know a place to find scholarships based on my circumstances? I have a slight fear that I'm not going to qualify for anything because my income is $35,000 but that's with the full time job.

I've already filled out the FAFSA and TAP for New York. Is there anything I'm missing. I'm just trying to cover all of my options.

Thank you!

[Assistant]
Contact your universities financial aid office about scholarships and they'll be able to point you in the right direction. Next use google to search for scholarships. Depending on your major will dictate whether you qualify for some.

Look at the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, Henry Ford has some as well.

Also never pay for scholarships or to have them processed.

Contact your local city and Congressman/woman they maybe to help as well.


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

[User]
[The Martian] Why was Watney unable to replant the already grown potatoes after the event that caused the sudden decompression?

I swear it happened close to, if not after harvesting time. Surely it would have been a matter of making some more "compost" and growing some more? If he had enough to make the trip to Ares 5, surely he had enough to tide him over while crop 2 grew?

[Assistant] They were dead. He started with fresh potatoes meant for a Thanksgiving meal, and grew full potato plants from those. Even if you dig up a potato, it's still alive and rearing to grow. Anyone who leaves a sack of them in a dark cupboard for too long knows how stubborn they can be. But exposure to the Martian environment, a freezing near vacuum, killed them dead. He had a lot of frozen potatoes, but no viable eyes left on them.


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

[User]
Why does Sweden require sterilization for transgendered peoples?

Been hearing alot about this through the news and friends, can someone explain the logic behind why the law exists? This there a legitimate medical/psychological concern or is it just conversatism being what it is?

[Assistant]
Well there are two parts to this. One is that regular treatment using "cross sex" hormones (typically known as Hormone Replacement Therapy or HRT) will eventually make most individuals sterile (but not all and, for transgender men, they can sometimes conceive and give birth if they refrain from taking testosterone for a certain period of time). In the United States and elsewhere, this is typically accounted for and many trans people will store whatever gametes they produce at a fertility clinic or similar service.

Current Swedish Law is such that transgender individuals cannot even *store* genetic material in order  to have biological children in the future. In short, Swedish law is such that transgender individuals do not have a right to make reproductive choices for themselves.

The logic behind the law is rooted in decades-old notions of eugenics and preventing undesirable populations from reproducing (similar to the forced sterilizations that largely occurred in the United Stated until the early 60s). The law is currently being upheld by the minority Christian Democrats, a religious right-wing party in Sweden who (IIRC) is courted because they're needed in order to form a coalition majority government in Parliament.


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

[User]
[DC] Why isn't Ra's interested in having one of the plethora of super-powered heroes as his heir, or a skilled non-powered hero (e.g. Green Arrow)?

Batman is impressive, no doubt. But there are several super-powered figures, from Superman to John Constantine; why not choose one of them?

Hell, there are a number of heroes who ARE willing to kill and do a lot more than that, such as Green Arrow and Constantine. Why not have one of them be his heir?

[Assistant]
Surprisingly simple answer- he doesn't really know Green Arrow or Constantine.

A large part of why its batman is that batman is the one who keeps running into his bases and demonstrating how skilled he is.  He's a fairly reclusive member of the superhuman community: most other superheroes he knows through reputation and the occasional one-off fight. Not really enough to  determine if they're worthy heirs.

 But Batman, he has a close (if antagonistic) relationship with. He knows what he does personally, he's seen how impressive he is with his own two eyes, he knows his mind and goals enough that he might just sway him.

As with many things,  it's who you know rather then who you are. There are plenty of people who could be heirs, but Batman is the one he's actually met.


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

[User]
Cmv: Declaring your sexuality on national TV is not an act worth commending

This opinion is in response to Philip Schofield, a presenter on 'This Morning' in the UK, coming out as gay on national TV recently.

The guy was married for 27 years to his wife and has two children with her. He has now come out as gay and made it a point to declare it on the show. I don't have any hate towards the LGBTQ community at all and if you're gay then that's nice for you but honestly, who cares? Why is everyone making it seem like he is a hero for declaring his sexuality?

On a lesser note, does no one care about the sanctity of marriage anymore? Marriage is a big commitment and it would hurt me a lot to think that after all those years my partner was lying to me and himself this whole time. Instead, he is being praised and applauded like it's a brave thing to do. It's not brave. It's nothing (actually it's kind of shit for his wife and kids). No one cares who you're attracted to. That's your personal business. There are so many issues in the world that are more worthy of reporting and attention than coming out in a country that is liberal. Can the news outlets focus on something important and not this nonsense for once?

Edit: let me apologise and retract the last paragraph about marriage and his wife. As a lot of the comments have pointed out and from my own understanding, I know he has already got his family's support despite it being a tough thing to accept after being married for so long. That matter is between him and his family and on that basis I take it back and apologise for using it as my fuel to my argument initially. The main thing is the media coverage on this and him being labelled a hero for it which is what I disagree with.

[Assistant]
He might not be 'a hero' for coming out, but in fact it is very brave of him to do so, just as it's brave when any public figure openly discusses a difficult issue (mental illness, surviving abuse, addiction etc). Talking openly helps destigmatize the issue and make others feel like it's possible for them to come out or be honest with themselves and others. If this guy's openness saves even one other gay person from going down the sham marriage path, it will have been worth it.

Also, speaking as the child of a gay man who married a straight woman, who was indeed devastated etc, dismissing this kind of coming out does not do anything to help the ex-wife or children. The more that homosexuality is destigmatized (and no, it's not fully destigmatized even in the UK), the fewer people will enter in sham marriages.


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

[User]
People have survived for years on extremely limited diets (POW's for example). When I read about the substances required for all the complex processes of our bodies, I wonder how this is even possible?

Obviously people on starvation diets lose weight, have little energy etc., but what about something as basic as cell replication? If you aren't getting the nutrients that are the building blocks of new cells, in the heart for example, it doesn't seem possible you could survive long. And nerve transmission, doesn't that require potassium? What if there's no potassium in your diet? How could your heart even beat without the nerve impulses telling it to?

[Assistant]
A lot of these people *don't* survive.  If you don't get enough of an essential nutrient, you eventually die.

And that sad reality is that the people who run these sorts of camps, through trial and error, figure out exactly how little they can feed their prisoners to keep them just barely alive.


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

[User] Eli5; how we find patient zero when there is disease outbreak? (Like how they found who started the ebola outbreak in 2014)

[Assistant]
First things first, Patient Zero was one guy, a specific patient who was credited with being the index case for HIV/AIDS. The general term for the first officially recorded case of a novel disease is index case, and it isnt as big of a deal as movies often imply. It *is* helpful to trace the source of something like Ebola back to an animal reservoir, and from an epidemiological perspective you want to be sure that youre at the end of the chain of infection.

In reality though you rarely know for sure who the index patient was overall or for a given outbreak, so it ends up being a bit de facto who did health authorities notice first? The Index Case is more of a result for how contact tracing and other epidemiological techniques work in practice than some sort of holy grail.


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

[User] [General Horror] you've been charged with assembling an 8-person team composed of the most badass heroes from Horror Movies ever, the kind of crew that will scare the shit out of any baddy from a Horror movie based on their reputations, skills, and experiences. Who do you pick?

[Assistant]
Ash - from Army of Darkness (Because badass)

That pothead from Cabin in the Woods (Because immune to mind-fuckery)

The jock from Cabin in the Woods (because he makes good choices when not exposed to stupidity-inducing gas)

Several female virgins that happened to survive their various perils (because tvtropes says so)

Andy... from Child's play... in his teen-to-adult years.  Because that kid should have been nothing more than a panicking-rocking-back-and-forth-psych-patient, but instead he confronts one of the more vile fears a human can experience without hesitation.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do sushi "all you can eat" restaurants make a profit?

sushi is relatively expensive but all you can eat restaurants seem to make the same quality but with a set price of usually around $20-25. They even offer appetizers. How do they make money?

[Assistant]
same as any other all you can eat.   make sure the material and labor cost of the dinner for one person is less than $20-$25.

materials wise, all you can eat sushi places load up on rice and skimp on the meat.   and they offer free soda.    water+rice = full stomach.

labor wise, they hire chinese and mexican cooks.   cheap labor.


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

[User] How is it insects can rub their 'eyes' without injuring them, but mammals/etc touching their eyes is damaging?

[Assistant]
So, first off, eyes have evolved independently more than once, and while they all kinda work mostly the same way, the animals which evolved them used different sorts of existing cells and tissues to end up with that similar functionality. Insect eyes and vertebrate eyes (so, mammals, but also fish and reptiles and birds) are two examples of different paths that led to eyes.

As such, we vertebrates have squishy eyes. There are many interesting kinds and multiples of eyelids and protective coverings which have evolved, but we have gooey eyes under all of that, whether it's a salmon or a turtle or a schausser or you and me. Our corneas and lenses are made of soft tissue.

Arthropod eyes are different. They grow with a protective layer of chitin, the same material as their exoskeleton. They didn't need to adapt eyelids to protect their lenses because their lenses *are* protective material.


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

[User] [X-Men Movies] When was Logan born and how would he have aged without the Adamantium poisoning him?

[Assistant] Early to mid 1800s in Canada at age 11-12 his powers appeared. Given he looks 40s about 150 years later he likely can live barring violent endings to circa 2200-2300 tops. However, in about every version, the adamantium for its incredible benefits cripples his healing as his body 24x7 fights the adamantium. Without it he heals about as fast in film but vastly faster in print.


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

[User] ELI5: How can scientists determine scientific constants (like the speed if ligh, specific heat capacity of water, and the size if a proton) with such accuracy and without much experimental error?

[Assistant] Each of those things involves lots of careful experiments, repeated independently, with equipment designed explicitly for the purpose. It's a fundamental part of the process of science to determine those constants as accurately as possible.


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

[User]
[LotR] What is religious life like in middle earth? Are the Valar or Eru worshipped?

I don't recall a lot of detail about churches or worship in Lord of the Rings, despite there being a richly developed pantheon. People mostly seem to pray to ancestors or great heroes and don't really talk about the Valar.

Is anything known about the day to day religious practices of the various peoples of middle earth? How much of the Silmarillion is known to the general populace?

[Assistant]
In Gondor, at meal time they look West to Numenor that was, Aman that is, and whatever is beyond. That kind of "saying grace" is about the extent of what we see.

When Numenor was still around, there was a festival on the mountain dedicated to Eru with the King also serving as high priest. The mountain, with Numenor, is now lost and so there is no longer that specific religious service.

The Valar are but the custodians of the world, not the creator and those in the know wouldn't *worship* them (although Men who haven't had many dealings with the Elves who know better likely do worship them - where do you think the Norse, Greek, etc. pantheons came from?). They may still revere them and call on their aid (as they are present within the world and have great power over it), but that's distinct from worship.


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

[User]
How common it is to emigrate after doing a postdoc overseas?

I have been invited to do an interview for a postdoc position, at an institute in STEM known worldwide for its quality. However, I am 30y old, finishing my PhD in south america, and the institute is in a country in Europe

I'll be honest, I'm tired. I left my hometown and family 6 years ago (3h by plane) to pursue MSc and PhD, and now I want to finish up and finally settle down, since now I have a whole support and friend network on this city. I would not move to a different country to only spend 12 months and come back.

How often, or difficult, it is for someone in my situation to emigrate? I do not mind the "moving" part itself, what I absolutely do not want is to do a back-and-forth across multiple countries for several years pursuing 12-month long projects. If I am to move somewhere else, I want to settle down.

[Assistant] Welcome to the post-doc grinder. It depends on what you want to do in your future. If you want to stay in academia, this is your life. If you want to to be in industrial research, than this may be relevant experience. If you just want to find a solid work place in industry or government (and focus on your private life) then a post-doc would be a waste of time.


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

[User] ELI5: how is one brain smarter than another? Does it process information more efficiently does it have more neurons what are the differences?

[Assistant]
We don't know. We simply don't have a definition for "smartness" or know where it comes from. What we do know that those who are able to use more parts of their brain for a task, as in visualise problems, can perform better in many things. We been able to measure this by tracking blood flow in the brain, but other than we simply don't know. Especially since many things we test for in IQ tests are things you can practice.

Only thing we have a strong connection in is that language skills seems to give an edge, as in more languages you can understand and use, along with mathematical abilities being connected in to understanding language. What or why? We simply don't know.


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

[User] ELI5: How is a global economy based on the requirement of constant, infinite growth sustainable in a world with limited, finite resources?

[Assistant]
Well it depends on what you mean by finite.  Technically the energy provided by the sun is finite as it'll burn out in however many billion years from now.

The truth is that the resources on earth, while finite, are still tremendous.  There's far more of them than folks make out.

Nothing, not even habitation on this planet, can last indefinitely.  When asking questions like this it is important to define what you mean by sustainable.  For how long?  If you literally mean "Forever" then no, it isn't.  If you mean "Until technology allows us to tap other resources" then yes, it is.  Because there's more of these finite resources (and even more alternatives to them) then you'd ever imagine.


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

[User]
Does the rate of gravity change from place to place? For example at higher altitudes does gravity get weaker?

And if it does, does NASA use a localized rate of gravity for their equations, or is the difference so negligible that it doesnt matter?

[Assistant]
Yes, slightly.

Theres a common misconception that astronauts on the ISS experience no gravity. This isnt true, theyre experiencing nearly the same as us, they float because theyre constantly falling back towards earth.

Technically your head experiences a weaker gravity than your feet, so your feet age more slowly than your head. The closer you are to a massive object the more slowly time passes.


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

[User] ELI5: what prevents the flame on a gas stove from igniting the gas thats in the supply line and blowing everything up?

[Assistant]
Fuel + oxygen + heat = fire

The gas line is full of fuel, but no oxygen or heat. So no fire.

As it comes out at the burner, a constant outward flow of gas blocks oxygen from backfilling the gas line. So it should never be a problem as long as it stays under pressure and has no leaks.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we get dark circles around our eyes when we don't sleep enough?

[Assistant] Arround our eyes and especially right under. Is the least thickest skin on the body. If you don't sleep your skin dehydrates making the skin more transparent and the blood vessels are showing. Blue-black collor.


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

[User]
What are some areas of science that can still be added to by a hobby scientist a la Sir Isaac Newton?

If someone had a strong scientific/ technical background but wanted to pursue research as a hobby rather than strictly a profession as the "gentleman scientists" of yore did.

I know of the DIYBIO movement, etc. If you were going to attempt to contribute some meaningful scientific knowledge to the world, what area of science/technology would you immerse yourself in purely for enjoyment? What skill sets would you want to develop?

[Assistant]
The area a single hobbyist is most likely to contribute to (IMO) is anything computational.

It seems limiting, but you can work in almost any field via computing.  You can work on computational physics problems, simulate chemical reactions, model infectious disease, analyze the human genome, mine behavioral data using search engines, etc.

The beautiful thing about computing is that computers are dirt cheap and there are an unbelievable amount of resources for programmers, for free, on the internet.


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

[User]
[Ghostbusters] How, exactly, was the Stay-Puff Marshmallow man supposed to end the entire world?

I mean, I understand if he could destroy one or two cities, but I don't see him having the durability, speed, or destructive powers that would warrant an end-of-the-world scenario.

[Assistant]
Ray said he the only thing he could do was think of the most harmless thing imaginable, and Gozer had no choice but to take that form.

Ray did the only logical thing he could do. It's impossible to think of nothing, so he thought of the most innocent thing possible. And he saved the world doing so.


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

[User]
ELI5: Has vision deteriorated significantly with advancements, or could most full grown adults just not see well before the 1700s?

Virtually every friend and family member I have has corrected vision. Mine's not horrible, but I couldn't perform simple functions without correction. Is this a new phenomenon, or did people just wander around with blurry vision?

[Assistant] Sight deficiencies are not a lot more common today than historically. However, you do have to keep in mind that throughout history and throughout most of the world, people did not read, and in fact mostly did farm labor. That removes quite a lot of the need for glasses in the first place.


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

[User] [Marvel Comics] "Everyone comes back except for Bucky and Uncle Ben." That used to be a common saying amongst comic book fans until Bucky came back. Has Uncle Ben come back ever in any continuity in the Marvel Universe?

[Assistant]
In Spider-Verse there's an Uncle Ben who got bit instead of Peter.

He became Spider-Man, and was trapped in a fallout shelter for years, his whole world had been irradiated and his family killed.

Man, being named Ben in Marvel is a raw deal.


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

[User] ELI5: How to gaming companies miss big bugs and glitches even after test runs?

[Assistant]
The biggest part is simply scale.

Blockbuster games sell tens of millions of copies -- GTA 5 has sold something like 55,000,000. Say that the average person spends 25 hours on a game (for some games, this is a high guess, but for others it's very low -- people often spend 100+ hours on COD or GTA during their ownership). That's 1.3 billion hours. Say that your testing department has 15 employees and that they work for 1 year, full-time, testing your game. For every 1 hour you spent on testing, the customers spend 43,333 hours on playing. When so much time is spent doing stuff in the game, the customers are *bound* to encounter bugs or glitches the testers didn't.

This is especially true when games are very large or complex, and have a long list of possible situations. Even in 30K hours, the testers couldn't test *every single possibility* in the game. Did they test what happens if a car explodes while upside down on a rock at night in the rain while the player is in the middle of the bike-mounting animation? Did they test what happens if you're in the middle of reloading a gun when a building collapses in mission 17 when your hand is supposed to cover your face, resulting in a weird animation glitch? Did they accelerate to mass speed while manipulating the camera with the mouse on its highest sensitivity but the aiming inverted? There are some bugs that only happen if you did one thing in one part of the game and another in a separate part 10 hours later -- if they were testing chunk by chunk (the usual situation), maybe they never saw that combination.

But even when they do catch things, they don't necessarily get fixed. Development time is finite, decisions are made about which things are important enough to spend it on. Super-glitchy games are usually games that were rushed to meet a tight deadline, or which had small budgets, meaning it just wasn't possible to spend valuable developer time fixing bugs over adding features that have more impact on sales. Then even when you do allocate time to fixing a bug, some are easier to fix than others. Some bugs exist because of tiny oversights in physics engines, and are very hard to track down. Sometimes, the bug exists in a licensed engine and the developers don't even have the ability to fix it, they have to get the engine's developer to try and fix it and that might not be done in time for the game's release.


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

[User] [ELI5] In the dark, why can we see an object when using the peripheral vision, but looking direcly at it we can barely see it?

[Assistant] There are two types of light receptor in the eye: rods and cones. Cones are colour sensitive but aren't good in low light conditions, and they're concentrated around the centre of your field of view in order to give you good colour vision during the day. The peripheries of your eye have mostly rods in them, which are much more sensitive to light, so in low-light conditions you'll see better at the edges of your vision than directly ahead.


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

[User]
What is the moral imperative to preserve a racial group?

I think culture is different from race- a black American has more in common with a white American than he does with a black Nigerian. So this question is separate from "multi-culturalism".

There are people who believe white people won't exist in a couple of centuries- not because of genocide but because of interbreeding with other races. Is it bad for our great-grandchildren to be neither white nor black nor Asian but something that's all of those and neither? Apart from the aesthetics of "I like how white people look", what's the moral imperative to prevent voluntary miscegenation of races even if it leads to what we'd describe as "white" not existing anymore?

[Assistant] I don't know any contemporary Philosophers who want to preserve particular racial phenotypes. If you want to know why people on the internet care about this, either ask social scientists, or just ask th3em.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why did the US specifically target Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons?

Ok, essentially the US hit Japan to force them to give up the war but why were Hiroshima and Nagasaki specifically targeted? Did they hold any strategic significance or was the US basically trying to cause as many casualties as possible?

[Assistant]
Nagasaki was the original primary target but was hidden by cloud cover on August 6, 1949, so Hiroshima (the secondary target) was used.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima were chosen due to thier military value. During World War II, the 2nd General Army and Chugoku Regional Army were headquartered in Hiroshima, and the Army Marine Headquarters was located at Ujina port. The city also had large depots of military supplies, and was a key center for shipping.

 Nagasaki was a center of heavy industry. Its main industry was ship-building, with the dockyards under control of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries becoming one of the prime contractors for the Imperial Japanese Navy, and with Nagasaki harbor used as an anchorage under the control of nearby Sasebo Naval District.


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

[User]
How would you fund consumers in a post-jobs world?

Imagine a future where robots and AI have surpassed humans in their ability to perform jobs. They're stronger, more precise, more creative, more empathetic, more flexible - name a skill, and the robot beats the human at it. Let's dodge for the moment the hairy question of whether owning a robot like that constitutes slavery (assume ownership works like today, humans and companies can own robots and AIs). Assume also that robots are long-lasting and power efficient so the marginal cost of running them is minuscule. Long story short, the market value of labor drops to near zero, as robot labor outperforms human labor on every metric (except for branding/excentricism, e.g. to show off your human butler). Historically, labor displaced by automation has found new jobs, that they could still perform better than machines - but imagine in our scenario, that we've finally run out of those, the robots now beat us at everything, there's no job we can come up with where the robot isn't already superior.

How do you maintain the purchasing power of consumers in a scenario like that, in order to maintain a market economy? Most consumers get their money by selling their labor, but the market value of that has just tanked. Sure, goods are cheaper as well now that they are produced, transported and sold by robots (production costs are now basically energy + raw material costs), but as long as they are just cheap, rather than free, then that's no use to the majority of people who are now unemployable.

If your answer is Universal Basic Income, then how do you fund it? Most of taxation currently comes from taxing labor, and in our scenario that has now mostly disappeared. We might increase VAT, but can that ever be enough to fund the "stipend" from which the VAT will be drawn when spent? (that doesn't seem to add up, some of the money flowing to the corporation would need to eventually make it's way back into the hands of a consumer, like it currently does via salaries). Since all these corporations that own all these robots are now massively profitable without employing anyone, maybe we can tax all this economic activity that is still going on there? But Amazon and others have shown that you can basically defer corporate taxation indefinitely by continuously reinvesting all your surplus cash and thus never actually making a profit. Do we start taxing them on revenue instead? Or do we tax the owners of the corporations? We've recently learned that stock owners can basically defer realization on their stock gains indefinitely too, by taking out loans instead of cashing in. So do we tax them on gains annually whether they sell or not? Or do we tax them on wealth instead of income?

Could some combination of these actually be enough to fund a UBI in scenario like that? If yes, how would it affect the economy if all these things that are currently taxed relatively little compared to labor were taxed a lot more? If no, do we need to be thinking in some completely other direction, to still make a market economy work in a scenario like that?

Edit 1: by using the phrase "market value" I seem to have implied that robots are already completely deployed everywhere in the market - I didn't mean to imply that (sorry, I'm an engineer, not an economist). I'm asking about the scenario where they exist, but might not have been made widely available yet (i.e. I don't want to assume everyone has a robot, because IMO that would be jumping the gun to assume that will come to pass).

Edit 2: to clarify, minuscule power draw is compared to a human. Assume servos, batteries, cpus and such with a power draw similar to what we know today, not magic perpetual motion machines. So the cost of running these is small (especially compared to a human) but not non-trivial (at least no more trivial than the running of other well-made machines).

[Assistant]
>How do you maintain the purchasing power of consumers in a scenario like that, in order to maintain a market economy?

Purchasing power? You are describing post scarcity!

If what you are saying is true then these machines can be created at no cost and run at no cost and perform duties better and more energy efficient than any human ever could. That is post scarcity and the only thing we would need is figure out how to distribute land and trade seasonal perishable foods.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do cinematographers do forced perspective while keeping everyone in focus?

I've heard of this technique before, where you place one actor much farther from the camera than the other to make them look much smaller by comparison. It makes perfect sense to me except for the question in the title.

Wouldn't having one actor near and one far require the camera to focus on the nearer actor leaving the far away actor blurry and out of focus, or vice versa?

[Assistant]
By using a higher f-stop (smaller camera aperture) and raising the amount of light.

The reason things get out of focus, and the reason we need to focus in general, is because light bouncing off the same object comes into the camera from all different directions and we need to focus that into a single point on the film/sensor. The smaller the hole that the light passes through, the fewer possible directions it can be coming from and therefore the less the lens needs to focus the light. Small holes mean less total light getting in though, so you have to turn the lighting up really bright to compensate.


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

[User]
Is it pure coincidence that the rotation rates of Mars and Earth are both 24 hours (-4 & +39 min)?

And maybe this isn't the same question, but: Is there such a thing as non-coincidental rotational resonance between bodies not orbiting each other?

[Assistant] It's just a coincidence, with a large enough set of known planets you could say if it was an uncommon speed.  But as you point out, their days are only roughly 24 hours, it's your choice of unit and rounding that creates the illusion if a pattern.


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

[User]
Is an MA in Medieval Studies a waste of time and money?

Hello and sorry for the long post. I would like to get some fresh insight about whether it's worth following an academic path in Medieval Studies in the UK. I hold a BA in English and I absolutely loved doing my dissertation on medieval literature and I got a First too. I've been thinking to follow an academic career for a while now and I now hold 2 offers to do an MA on Medieval Studies or Late Antique/Byzantine Studies in two prestigious unis in England. But the thing is that the tuition fees are ridiculously high and I would need to take a loan which really puts me off given that these degrees aren't exactly sought after. I had hoped that for the second course I would get a scholarship but the history department said they wouldn't release any scholarship this year, which was frustrating because they received millions of pounds from some foundation and some of it was supposed to go to scholarships.

Anyway, I was told that to land an academic post (especially a permanent one) is super hard, unstable and a lot depends on luck too. If I don't land one then I'm not sure what else I could do with such niche qualifications and a lot of debt... Plus, I would need 4 years to get my MA and PhD and by that time I would be 31-32. I take it that while other friends will have started building their lives, I would be moving here and there in short-term contracts (which aren't even certain). But even that would be fine if there was at least some guarantee at the end. My old supervisor said that those who are good and determined always make it at the end but then again he landed a permanent post two decades ago.

How do you see the situation for medievalists in unis? Is it really that grim as been presented to me? If one can't get an academic job, what else do they end up doing even remotely similar? I can't decide whether I should follow this path or just get an industry job and pursue my scholarly interests in my free time. I was reading some old essays of mine today and I got emotional knowing that I might not do literary research again but then again maybe I could become an independent scholar or write articles? I'm just worried that I might shoot myself in the foot while building castles in the sky.

[Assistant]
A lot of people will give you similar advice:

- Only you can make the final call about pros and cons
- There are no secure jobs, unless you are exceptionally talented AND lucky AND well-connected. Or unless you are prepared to go work at unis in Asia or the Middle East (which can be a nice career for those who are suited to it).
- If you do it, have a realistic backup plan. Accept that you will be starting at the bottom of the ladder in your early 30s.
- Dont pay to go to grad school. Especially, dont get in debt for it. If you break this rule, know that by following your dreams you will be sacrificing your future security. If a department thinks your research field is important, they should be willing to pay for it.
- Only go to grad school if you literally cant see yourself being happy doing anything else.


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

[User] ELI5: How can "foreign workers" be cheaper for corporations like Disney to employ? (Can/US) Minimum wage, labour laws, etc. don't decrease based on the worker's nationality, so why?

[Assistant]
A few reasons:

1) Lower wages. Sure you can't charge below minimum wage, but local workers have this tendency to want more than minimum wage, while people from poorer countries are more likely to be happy(er) with minimum wage

2) Benefits. Native workers are more likely to want/demand benefits: full-time work, health care, etc. Foreign workers, again less so.

There's plenty of other reasons too.

And with the recent Disney news, the workers being replaced weren't minimum wage workers: they were tech workers. Native tech workers often expect $60-80 K/year as a minimum, and experienced tech workers are often payed well over $100K/year, plus benefits in the form of insurance, time off, etc. For those jobs, paying foreign workers $40K/year as a starting rate is a huge savings, and still more than companies in India are likely to pay; mostly because it costs a lot less to live in India.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did the iPod Shuffle charge from a 3.5mm headphone jack?

I never see any articles mentioning how they charge, everyone is just concerned for it to BE charged.

I mean, it would be lit if I could charge my phone through a headphone jack...

How does it work?

[Assistant]
For charging a battery you just need two connections. The headphone jack always has at least two (sometimes more for microphones)
It is not common to charge via headphone jacks but nothing restricts you to do so. Apple has built a charger to transfer the electrical energy from 5 Volt DC to whatever the shuffle needs.


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

[User] [Animorphs] Did the Animorphs really represent a credible threat to the Yeerk invasion or were they only a nuisance at best?

[Assistant]
They started out as a nuisance.  They were barely surviving themselves and never actually win other than barely maintaining the status quo most of the time.  That's why their goal was always to stall time to wait for the Andalite cavalry.

They won in the end because the Ellimist stacked the deck like the Drode said.  They had Visser One's host's son, and that played a part in the power struggles between Visser One and Visser Three.  They have someone who is empathic and intuitive enough to start rebellions in the ranks of the Yeerks and the Taxxons, without even realizing she is doing it.  Elfangor was put on Earth for years and allowed to father a human son, to give him incentive to even thought of giving humans morphing powers in the first place.  Of all the Andalites they could have ran into, they had Elfangor's younger brother, the only one who wouldn't have just killed them all when he found out what they were, because he trusted his brother's decision.

With those connections they were able leverage forces that they shouldn't be able to by their morphing powers alone.


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

[User] [Game of Thrones] Which regions keep supplying men to the Wall during Jon's time there?

[Assistant] All of them most likely. Except for maybe Dorne. Certain brothers were entrusted to collect recruits for the wall. They'd visit dungeons and jails across the kingdoms collecting anyone that rather live in the frozen ass end of the world than visit the executioners block or spend years in a dark cell. And the kingdoms were happy to ship the criminals away so long as they never left the wall.  While the show makes it appear as a rather formal affair it's probably a bi yearly routine with little if any fanfare from the visiting brothers accept to ask permission to visit the cells. Only political prisoners or the truly vile were excluded from taking the black by their jailers.


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

[User]
[Black Panther] What if T'Chaka had taken his nephew home?

So throughout the movie it's suggested that a lot of this could have been avoided if T'Chaka had taken his nephew home but really?  I mean he killed Erik's father, wouldn't the story have instead been Killmonger destroying the country from within, kind of like Loki?

[Assistant]
He grew up with no contact with Wakandans, so his mind warped them into the worst boogeymen.  Had he grown up under their love and guidance he would have seen them as real people.  He would have formed bonds and attachments, making 100% betrayal very difficult.

Wakanda also probably has decent mental health care in the event he was a total psychopath.  They could have detected it early and treated him.


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

[User]
Askscience: What is it going to take to capture the energy in a lightning strike?

We can target with reasonable accuracy where the lightning will hit, on an average.

What sort of storage techniques are at our disposal that could contain the energy in the strike. Giant capacitor? Fast charging batteries (I don't think our technology is up to it)? Could we directly convert to heat and vaporize water for pressure storage?

How about setting up multiple stations in close proximity to dissipate charge?

It seems to me we're really missing out on a lot of potential here.

[Assistant]
Big problem:  the lightning channel wastes all the energy!  It's like a big fluorescent bulb.  Don't forget, the electrical energy is moving inwards into the lightning channel.  Energy doesn't race along the channel.   Same with hot wires in an electric heater: the energy starts out in the surrounding e-field, then dives inward into the wire.

So if lightning struck a 10ft tower, you could only intercept 10ft worth of the energy in the miles-long lightning bolt.

To gather much lightning energy, we'd really need a 10KM tower that sticks up into the thunderstorm.


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

[User]
How do dogs perceive their heightened senses of smell and hearing? Do they have any process to prevent information overload due to overlapping smells and sounds from far away?

I thought about this on my German shepherds walk yesterday while he was in a very energetic mood. He wanted to sniff everything and I couldn't help but wonder how he manages the fact that he can smell the tree, the dogs who peed on the tree, the trash can, the food in the trash can, the squirrels, the footprints of other people, ect. How do they manage all the information they get from their senses?

[Assistant]
The dog brain has a significantly more developed olfactory area than the human brain, and essentially acts more as a vision compliment than you would imagine it based on your experience. The wet nose even serves to detect the direction of wind, allowing stereoscopic smelling.

So basically, "how do you manage all that information from your eyes?" The same way, just different.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why didn't the Republic just EMP blast the droid army any time there was a battle?

Nuclear EMPs would shut down anything electronic, I understand nuclear technology might not be in the Star Wars universe but I'm sure something similar could've been made. In the Clone Wars series the troopers use EMP-like grenade, why don't they make that to mass scale?

[Assistant] They have shields that repel super-duper-heated plasmas and gas projectiles, metalworking that resists superheated stable solid-light plasma (or whatever the hell lightsaber beams are), and an entire planet covered in city-to the point where oceans are kept in storage tanks. EMPs are probably childs play in Star Warfare, something that might have worked back in the days of the ancient Old Republic but by the time of the Clone Wars they probably had a fix for that, some sort of anti-electromagnetic field or circuitry that wasn't vulnerable or even the metal they were built from was enough to shield.


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

[User]
When batteries start to lose voltage do they produce less current?

So when a battery starts to lose voltage does it produce less current and therefore the object that is connecting to it can produce less power from it. If so is there like a minimum amount of power objects can run on and when this threshold is not longer obtainable the battery is considered dead?

[Assistant] It depends on the load. If the load is ohmic, then less voltage will produce less current by V=IR. If the load has some sort of active power regulation, then less voltage will actually cause it to draw *more* current, because it needs a constant power, and P=IV.


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

[User] ELI5 How do toilets flush without overflowing on water and still have water left over in the bowl?

[Assistant] The pipe from the bowl to the sewer forms a bend that traps air/gases behind the water in the bowl. When you flush, the water in the bowl rises above the bend in the pipe and pressure moves the water into and around the bend. The water is now falling down the pipe, creating a vacuum behind it, pulling water from the bowl into the pipe. Once air reaches the bend in the pipe again, the falling water will now pull air into the pipe instead of the water in the bowl, leaving enough as it refills from the tank to trap another pocket of air in the bend, ready for your next flush.


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

[User]
ELI5: how come modern phones and tablets don't require touch screen calibration the way older Touch devices used to.

I remember on my old pda I would have to calibrate it once a week by touching targets on different parts of the screen.

[Assistant]
They use different technologies.

Older touch screens measured the electric resistance at various points around the screen to check if you were touching them. This method requires calibration so that the software knows what resistances measured at which points correspond to specific parts of the screen being touched.

But modern touch screens measure the capacitance, rather than the resistance. This type of screen does not need calibrating. It's also better at detecting more than one finger, and it can respond to "touches", rather than having to be pressed.


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

[User]
CMV: The idea of choosing your own pronouns is intrinsically wrong.

Language is how we think, it is how we comprehend every piece of information we obtain. When you are thinking silently to yourself, you are thinking using words. Even now, as you read this post, I am transferring thoughts from my brain into yours by using words. That being said, trying to tell someone which words they can or cannot use, or trying to control their use of language is like trying to control how they think.

Let's avoid the transgender topic for a sec, and let's think of a different scenario. Imagine you are sitting at a bar, having a drink with a few friends, when a guy pulls up on a big, loud, motorcycle. A Harley, or a chopper, (I don't know bikes) and this guy looks like your stereo-typical biker. He's got the leather vest, the bandana on his head, sleeves of tattoos, a chain hanging from his back-pocket, and this guy comes walking into the bar, swinging his shoulders, thinking he's the meanest, toughest sumbitch that ever stepped foot in that bar.

What sort of thoughts would you have about that particular individual? They could range from:

"Oh he looks tough. Don't fuck with him!"

to:

"Pfft... dude looks like a pussy. He's a poser hiding behind his tattoos."

But no matter what your opinion of the biker is, and no matter how different it might be from his own opinion of himself, he does not get a vote. He does not get to decide what you think of him. All he can do, is present himself however he chooses, and let everyone else form their own opinion of him.

Imagine how ridiculous it would seem if this biker tried to demand that people refer to him in a specific way. If I said to him:

"You look like a pussy."

and he responded with:

"No! I'm a badass! And you have to refer to me as a badass! Stop oppressing me!"

If he did that, no one would take him seriously. Right?

I want to clear the air a bit (because I know I'll get backlash for this) and say that I have no problem with transgendered people. If a boy/man decides that his secret to happiness is by dressing like a woman, acting like a woman, and generally living like a woman in every way, then by all means, go for it. Gender norms are a societal idea, and we are under no obligation to follow them. But just because he sees himself as a woman, doesn't mean that I do. And when in contact with transgendered people, I will choose to use whatever pronoun I see fit, because the image of that individual in my head is determined by my own interpretation, not by their wishes.

TL;DR: Everyone has the right to present themselves however they choose. But **no one** has the right to decide how others perceive them.

[Assistant]
First of all, pronouns are a *really* arbitrary linguistic category.  Some languages don't specify gender in pronouns at all.  Some have a "neuter" pronoun.  Some have different pronouns that the speaker chooses based on the formality of the situation.  So, there's nothing strange about choosing a pronoun to project a certain "image."  In Japanese, for instance, there are over 15 words for "I" that you can choose from depending on your self-image and the situation, and the most common words for "he/she" don't specify gender at all.  Choosing pronouns is a conscious choice in *many* languages.  Gendered pronouns are really just a little quirk of English, not some kind of universal concept.

Language has a powerful ability to shape perception.  The words people use can project their desired image, and the words you use to describe others can shape the way you think about them.  Chances are that if you make an actual effort to refer to a transgender person by their desired pronouns, you'll start to see them as their desired gender.  If you stubbornly cling to the pronouns that match their chromosomes, you'll probably *never* accept their new gender no matter how much they've changed physically.  When you force the wrong pronouns onto someone, you're essentially saying that you don't acknowledge or respect their identity, and you never will.


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

[User]
Why do we still have daylight savings time?

Wasn't it created for farmers? Can't farmers just set their alarm clocks to match the sunrise?

[Assistant]
As society became more industrialized, things like the beginning of school, work (for those with non-agrarian jobs), and public transportation were all synchronized by times, which were constant year round. For farmers who traditionally worked based upon sunrise and sunset, this caused their schedules to become mismatched with everyone else's at certain times of the year, so DST was proposed to alleviate that

That's only one of the reasons originally proposed for DST, though. Another was that adjusting the clocks so that it stayed light into the later hours of the day would reduce the need for artificial lighting and save electricity. This may have been true initially, but with the introduction of air conditioning into housing, more recent studies have shown that any electricity saved by reducing the need for lights is offset by needing to run the air conditioning later into the evening.

Finally, some people just argued that it made sense to have an extra hour of sunlight in the evening, after people had finished working, rather than to sleep through that hour in the morning.


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

[User]
[Batman] Is Batman a cunning linguist?

How many languages does he understand? How good is he at debate?

[Assistant]
The Bat is a polyglot, speaking at least a dozen languages fluently, and probably a dozen more conversationally.

Also, consider some of the partners with whom he has practiced his cunning lingualism.

The Bat dated Zatanna for a while, and she would have taught him how to use his cunning linguistics forwards and backwards, in order to achieve almost magical effects.

The Bat also data Diana of Themyscira. Diana is herself a noted cunning linguist, from a nation of cunning linguists. The Amazons are such cunning linguists that you could almost say they *invented* cunning lingualism, and Diana, as their crown Princess, is likely one of the most cunning linguists on the planet; she would be an ideal teacher.

Diana also possesses the god-tongue, or the all-tongue; her cunning lingualism extends to *every* human language, as well as alien languages such as martian and kryptonian. The Bat couldn't possibly ask for a more qualified teacher to instruct him in the ways of cunning lingualism.

Now, Selina Kyle is a mortal woman, and there might be some issues with the Bat practicing his cunning lingualism with her; Zatanna might have taught him to speak too quickly, or Diana might have taught him to speak too forcefully.

However, the Bat has also practiced his cunning lingualism with a number of mortal women. Talia al Ghul is an obvious example; as the Daughter of the Demon, she would know dozens of languages herself, and possesses strength of mind and spirit roughly on par with Catwoman. The Bat has also practiced his cunning lingualism with Vicki Vale, who, as a world-renowned photojournalist, would certainly be familiar with a score of languages.

And remember: the Bat is always prepared. There is no task too difficult, no technique too obscure, for the Bat to master. He will seek out the best trainers, gather the most insightful advice, and practice until he is a world-class cunning linguist ... because that's what heroes do.


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

[User] ELI5: How do "active cultures" get into yogurt?

[Assistant]
To make yogurt, milk has to be inoculated with bacteria. Typically Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus bulgaricus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, and Lactobacillus casei.

With out those bacteria, the milk would never be converted into yogurt. Active cultures mean that the factory did not kill the bacteria in the yogurt, so they're still alive when you eat the yogurt.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does alcohol burn on open wounds? Like what chemical process is making our pain receptors go off?

[Assistant]
Alcohol has a strange property where it causes the receptors for heat in your skin and mouth to become more sensitive.

These receptors (VR1) normally trigger at around 42C, but alcohol causes them to trigger at around body temperature.

So the heat you are feeling is actually your own body temperature.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] why is there no advertising?

 I see no brand names, billboards, holographic commercials or anything that seems like an ad in a capitalist culture. My thought is that the empire strictly controls the economy but my real thought is that it takes away from the medieval future reality in the films.

[Assistant]
There absolutely is advertising. It's all over the place in the lower parts of the city on Coruscant, like where Anakin and Obi-Wan caught the shapeshifter assassin.

But for real, most of the characters we follow are in places where advertising is unlikely to be profitable.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are young children generally fussy eaters? Shouldn't they be biologically wired to eat anything and everything for strong growth and development?

[Assistant] Kids are wired to eat the stuff that used to be most important to surviving: high-calorie stuff, fatty stuff, etc. They're also more sensitive to bitterness than adults are (bitterness, evolutionary, tends to mean "bad for you"). So when you put a kid in front of a slice of pizza and a brussel sprout, the kid's naturally going to prefer the slice of pizza.


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

[User] ELI5:Do people perceive colors the same way? In other words, is the red I see the same as the red everyone else sees?

[Assistant] Everything we've tested thus far suggests that we do. We all use the same light-sensitive molecules, which send the same nerve signals. Sure, it may be different at a brain level, but there is nothing to suggest anything other than an extremely similar experience.


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

[User]
Eli5: how can money lose value?

So ive always sort of understood the idea of inflation and that the dollar loses value, but ive never understood how? Like the more money in the market, the lesser the value, but correct me if im wrong in saying that money is an idea used to unify selling and spending in a quanitative way so people can fairly access what theyre purchasing/selling and its worth? So why not just make the amount of the currency whatever you want? It just seems like currency is an arbitrary number rather than something of actual significance and ive never understood that?

[Assistant]
Let's say your family household is the nation's economy.  Dad's making middle class income, you get $5 for doing chores, but buying a new $1,200 GameBox is expensive for the family.

Then Dad gets a raise.  He's providing more value to his company, and in turn they're paying him 10x more! Now, the family can buy the new $1,200 GameBox without thinking about it.  That's **good inflation** because while money is worth a little less to the family it's not because the dollars are worth less outside the home's economy.  There's simply more money to go around, and anyone can spend more of it outside the household (read: foreign economy).

In another universe, Dad got his pay cut for being bad at his job.  Now you're only getting $1 for the same chores because that's all the family can afford.  You have to do 4x as many chores just to squeeze an extra $1 out of Mom.  That's **Bad Deflation**, because the dollar's value outside the economy hasn't changed, but within the household the scarcity of dollars has made them worth more.

Turns out, Dad works for the US Mint printing dollar bills.  He feels really bad about cutting your pay for the same work, so he prints himself off an extra $5000 at work and brings it home.  Now the family can buy the $1200 GameBox because money isn't an issue, but they aren't providing any extra value to the global economy.  That's **Bad Inflation**, because if Dad keeps doing it, GameBox will have to up their price to $12,000 because the dollar isn't worth as many chores as it used to be due to all the extra dollars going around.

**Good Deflation** occurs when the Mint fires dad and starts collecting all those extra bills Dad printed.  This brings the GameBox price back down to $1,200 and prevents all the other global economies from riding a crazy roller coaster while they try to balance themselves again.  Another example of Good Deflation would be when GameBox needs to stimulate their own economy and lowers the price to $500, so you don't need to do as much work to buy what you need because the dollars in your house are now worth more to GameBox's economy.

When trying to understand the Macro Economics of a nation that can print it's own bills, you'll go crazy trying to make all the numbers add up.  It's best to imagine that every dollar given to the US Treasury/Federal Government (taxes, etc) is immediately taken out back and burned, removing it from the economy (Deflation). Then imagine every dollar spent by the Federal Government (roads, army, etc) as one that is freshly printed (Inflation).

This is why the US Congress doesn't have to actually balance their budget to zero expenses vs income.  They literally print an infinite amount of new bills to pay for every program, and balance it with an estimate of what will be burned out back each year in taxes/fines/literal fires. Very smart people analyze every program and advise Congress how much a new program will inflate or deflate the dollar.

So, something like the COVID Stimulus prints a shitload of money, inflating the dollar, but giving us a short-term boost that helps people not starve.  The theory is that we'll recoup it with taxes or stimulate some new industry that directly competes (and wins) with another country like China or Mexico, forcing them to lower their prices.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do counties have different names in different languages?

Example: Deutschland is Germany in English. Why dosnt everyone just call a country by the name it gives itself?

[Assistant]
Translation into other languages, including mispronunciation and physical inability to pronounce certain sounds.

1) Translation: countries like the United States are just words. You can directly translate them into a different language. In Spanish, it's Estados Unidos. The words just happen to have pretty direct translations.

2) Mispronunciation: Turkey in Turkish is pronounced probably closer to the spelling Turkia. It's not that hard for an English speaker to try saying. But they didn't. Keep in mind, too, that country names can be very old. So at some point, the mispronunciation is simply the way you say it in that language.

3) Inability to pronounce certain sounds: language is interesting. We're born being *able* to learn and produce all phonetic sounds of any language. But at a very young age, you lose your ability to say sounds that aren't familiar.

In English, R and L are very different. In Japanese, they're very similar. You actually lose the ability to even *hear* the difference if you aren't exposed to it as a child. In Hindi, there are 3 different ways to pronounce the letter D. It's really hard as an English speaker to even tell any difference between them. And this is proven by experiment: if you slowly transition an R to an L step by step with computer programs, English speakers have a clearer threshold where R becomes L. Japanese speakers have a lot harder time having a consistent threshold of detecting which is which. Same thing for English speakers and the D's.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are surgeries and operations usually held in early mornings?

Whenever I hear about someone going into surgery or when I myself had an operation, why is it that it's always early in the morning (around 5-7am)?

EDIT: Thank you everyone for your answers c: I didn't really expect this to be #1 on ELI5...

[Assistant]
Edit: Thanks for the gold!

Early morning surgery is mostly about a condition called ileus.

Other commenters have pointed out that fasting compliance is greater before breakfast. While having an empty stomach for anesthesia induction is important (mostly to prevent stomach contents from going places they shouldn't -- like the lung) and likewise not having a lot of blood flow to the gut while maneuvering there is also good those are generally minor considerations (you can drain stomach contents fairly easily if required).

One of the more serious potential side effects of surgery and anesthesia is this condition called ileus, it is essentially when your intestines stop working because of surgery. This disease is caused by surgery and can be diagnosed as soon as the anesthesia wears off. While many cases resolve on their own (watch and wait), cases that don't have potential to cause serious harm to the patient.  And because of how the gut works and the post-surgical medicines, by the time a patient complains of their symptoms, serious harm may be done.  But what does that have to do with morning surgery?

Essentially, after you have completed surgery and recovery (which takes some time), your surgeon can then start to examine you for ileus (using a stethoscope to listen for activity, observing passing gas or a bowel movement). With early morning surgery, patients start recovering between lunch and dinner when their gut is primed for activity which when combined with the water (which can trick the body into starting the digestive process) makes the condition much easier to detect. Having the patient recovered from anesthesia also gives some 'lead time' to allow the disease to resolve itself (many cases of ileus resolve themselves within ~4 hours) before making decisions about whether to keep the person overnight. If you are doing a surgery starting at 2pm, by the time the person is out of recovery, they are already shutting down for the night, harder to hear whether ileus is present. (Another consideration for early morning surgery, is to avoid unnecessary drowsiness when out of anesthesia)

So with early morning surgery, you make the disease easier to find and prevent (at least some) people from staying overnight if they don't have to. There's lots of other more minor considerations and factors that make life easier, but the ileus is the big factor and why surgeons almost universally start surgery early.

Tl;dr: After recovery, fart for your surgeon, it will be music to their ears.


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

[User]
Understanding Lacan's object petit a and anxiety as 'lack of the lack'

Ok, so in trying to understand the ins and outs of Lacan I am going through a variety of texts, which tbh, just leave me more confused than when I started.

So this is what my texts seem to be suggesting

\- object a is formulated as 'lack incarnated'

\- object a is 'the Real - the symbolic = more or less a fraction of the Real'

\- but this fraction of the Real is also the surplus which is jouissance.

**Question 1**: I have one text differentiating jouissance from desire, as the former goes 'beyond the pleasure principle' and I have one text stating that it is jouissance *cause desire*. If both right, how are these combined?

Furthermore:

\- One text states that object a, by 'not being there' allows for fantasy to cover and secure the lack (driving desire)
\- However, anxiety is mapped out as a 'too close proximity to the object cause of desire' (object a), which erases the necessary lack - thus hindering fantasy, hindering desire = anxiety (too close to the Real)

**Question 2:** If object a is 'lack incarnated' - how does the 'too close proximity' to it cancel out the lack necessary for desire? Because the above reasoning seems to suggest that removing object a would cure anxiety, but object a cannot be removed from the equation, right?

I feel like I am missing a vital step /component, but at this point, all texts are muddled and I can't detangle these questions on my own. Help is much appreciated!

And this might be baby-level Lacan, but what I am trying to get at is how anxiety is 'the failure of the fantasy' (fantasy as a compass and organiser of meaning for the subject and the connection to the Other and the symbolic order etc.)

[Assistant]
I think the main issue with those concepts is that the meaning will depend on the period of Lacan we are talking about. In fact, object a is different if it's object a, object (a), or object *a*

I would recommend to take a step back and first tell us why do you need to understand object a, so we can point to what text will answer better that particular issue.

PS: Try to read Bruce Fink's translations, it tends to be much clearer than any other.


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

[User]
ELI5: If a company or website gets hacked, why does it matter how strong my password is? Isnt it more important that I dont re-use a password?

If a site gets hacked, am I at any sort of advantage by having a complicated password, or does it not really matter at that point?

[Assistant]
Any company worth its salt will store your password in a form called a hash. This is you password scrambled up and reduced in size with math, so its near impossible to get your original password back. The standard practice for hackers once they get the hash is to do the same math at all sorts of different passwords to see if your hash comes out. This is the reason you have complicated passwords. More possible different passwords make this so much more difficult.

So once they plug the hole in their security, the hackers wont be able to just log in using your password. They wouldnt have figured it out.


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

[User] [ELI5] what does it mean when an abandoned car on the highway has a white bag or object hanging out from the window?

[Assistant]
There are certain laws pertaining to cars left on the side of the road. After a certain amount of time the car is considered abandoned and will be towed off the road.

A white object (like a shirt or towel) is the the sign that you will be returning to the car and are not just abandoning it.


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

[User] ELI5: How do ticks expand so much despite having an exoskeleton?

[Assistant] If you look at them way up close, using a scanning electron microscope, you can see that their exoskeleton is folded, finely corrugated, so that it can expand to what seems like a huge size. You can often see clusters or patches of bacteria on the exoskeleton, and it seems obvious that when a tick breaks open, as they sometimes do, the bacteria could easily mingle with the blood meal. That is especially bad because ticks can heal themselves when theyre torn open. When you squeeze one, trying to get it off of your skin, you can then easily inject those bacteria into your wound.


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

[User] ELI5: How did Unidan (and other people) get caught manipulating votes?

[Assistant] There's probably a bot that tracks which users upvote which topics from which IP adress and it found a pattern of Unidan starting a topic and specific accounts with specific IP's immediately upvoting all those topics.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do oil rigs at sea have a constant flame burning on top of them? Natural gas? And why couldn't it be collected as well instead of wasting it?

[Assistant] Yes it is natural gas. Oil reservoirs usually come with an associated pocket of natural gas. It could be collected if they wanted to but often its not economical to build the additional infrastructure required to capture and transport it so they just burn it off.


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

[User]
CMV: Even if I'm a pro - DIY stands for "Do-It-Yourself" so as long as I did it myself, it's a DIY.

The title basically, I was joking with my friends about a new car I bought. It happened to be from my company and a model I actually worked on. So I called it a DIY jokingly. My friend got all prickly and said that it's not a DIY since I am a professional.

Obviously, it's NOT a DIY in that particular scenario since I didn't build the entire car myself, but the "pro" argument is what stuck with me. ~~That makes no sense. DIY stands for "Do It Yourself", how does professional experience have anything to do with it? If I'm a general contractor and I decide to build my own patio... well nothing about that sentence changes the fact that I did it myself which is what the word means literally. I mean it's in the name...~~

Update: One of the commenters below has tweaked my view a bit  - would love to keep the conversation going on this adjusted premise.

 *How you execute the project and with what tools determines DIY-ness.. not my status as a professional?*

IE :

||Professional|Amateur|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Professional Equipment|Not DIY|DIY|
|Amateur Equipment|DIY|DIY|

[Assistant]
Words and terms are rarely literal and rarely match an exact dictionary definition.

"DIY" stands for "Do-it-yourself", but it also implies a sort of amateurism and custom/impromptu workmanship to it. A totally standard job, done to professional standards, that just happens to have been done at the contractor's own patio rather than a client's, does not necessarily meet the spirit of DIY even if that person literally Did It Themselves. Similarly, if you had bought a kit car and built it in your professional shop, it'd be kind of odd to call that a DIY, but if some rando bought a kit car and assembled it in their garage it'd be a lot closer to the spirit of DIY.


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

[User] ELI5: Why when taking a photo on your smartphone is there a clear difference when you're using zoom, even though the quality hasn't visibly changed.

[Assistant]
Smartphones generally^1 have only what is known as "digital zoom".

This is as opposed to "optical zoom". Optical zoom is when the lens moves or changes in some way, enabling you to get a close-up of the subject, still with the same high resolution (i.e. lots of megapixels).

Now, imagine that you take a photo without zooming at all. Then, you cut out the edges of that photo leaving only the middle bit (and obviously fewer megapixels), but you make it so that the remaining middle bit takes up the whole of the screen by zooming in on it with your computer.

This is "digital zoom". When you zoom on your smart phone, it literally just ignores the edge part of the picture, and gives you the middle part, and that obviously has fewer megapixels in it than the whole picture did.

Is this a problem? Almost certainly not if you're only going to show the picture on a screen (e.g. upload it to Facebook), but fewer megapixels makes it less suitable for printing, especially if you want to print at photo-quality.

^1 Note that some smartphones now have started to include a form of optical zoom, for example the iPhone 7+ uses two different lenses so that one can be adjusted in the factory for normal photos and the other for fully zoomed photos. Then, for something in between, it uses software to combine the two images. This is a relatively new feature, though, and doesn't apply to most smartphones.


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

[User]
[Transformers] Why does Megatron put up with Starscream?

The dudes openly insubordinate and not particularly competent.  Why hasnt Megatron killed him? Or at least fired/demoted/imprisoned/literally anything other than keeping him around.

[Assistant]
Starscream keeps Megatron on his toes - if he didn't have to watch out for constant murder attempts, he'd lose his edge.

It's actually the general policy among Decepticons - if someone beats you to take your job, they're probably more deserving of it anyway.


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

[User]
[Bioshock]Could Andrew Ryan have done anything, made certain ideological compromises, to keep his "utopia" from crumbling into chaos?

Instead of, y'know, allowing bastards-take-all, laissez-faire, dog eat dog market forces to determine literally everything.

[Assistant] Could he have? Probably. Would he have? Almost certainly not. Andrew Ryan was so convinced of the perfection of his system, that he didn't even recognise it crumbling around him. What did he do when people started getting jacked up on super-mutagenic-slug-juice? Ensure a more stable, and more profitable supply. Even in the end, it wasn't his vision that caused Rapture to collapse, it was others trying to compromise it. At least in his eyes.


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

[User]
Do stars that are about to go supernova cause any visual cues before it actually happens?

Hello,

as title says do stars that are about to go supernova create any actual visual cues in them when they are getting close to going supernova like lets say when they enter into iron fusion phase (or any other phases such as silicon) or area about to enter into it and yes im aware that stars cannot fuse iron. Besides them dimming would observer notice any noticable difference in their orbit in it such as sudden colour change, more violent shedding of their outer layers or are visual cues too slow to rise from core that they do not have time to make it into surface before star goes supernova? Would i notice something different in orbit rather than light-years away such as case in betelgeuse dimming?

 What about sudden tempature changes or any other noticable differences before supernova or moments before it?  Would i really see star rupture in half if i could see it in slow motion enough? Thank you in advance for answers.

[Assistant]
Towards the end of central carbon burning, the core evolves too rapidly for the envelope to respond, or more precisely the nuclear timescale of the core becomes shorter than the thermal timescale of the envelope. At the temperatures required for advanced burning stages, neutrino losses become increasingly important and completely dwarf other losses by the time carbon is centrally depleted. In order to support itself, energy generation in the core has to exceed these losses, so fuel is burnt through increasingly rapidly.

In addition, the large neutrino losses mean that energy generated in the core cannot go towards supporting the envelope. This is instead achieved by energy generation in the hydrogen and helium burning shells outside the CO core.

Both of the above factors mean that evolution of the core is effectively decoupled from that of the envelope sometime during carbon burning, so there will not be any visible changes on the surface beyond the typical (and usually quite significant) variability of evolved massive stars. The first electromagnetic signal we will receive is therefore the appearance of the supernova itself. Note that core-collapse precedes this by hours and is detectable as a burst of neutrinos if near enough. A detectable gravitational wave signal should also be produced.


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

[User] [Mario Bros] How good are the Mario Bros plumbing services? Are they affordable? I feel like I never hear anything about jobs they do from clients - so maybe they're a front for drug running or something?

[Assistant] Theyre very good. Youre unlikely to be able to hire them though, theyre on contract with the Mushroom Kingdom at the moment and have an impeccable record at removing Koopas and Goombas from the pipes.


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

[User]
Are there strains of HIV that arent detectable by modern testing?

(Edited to meet guidelines)

Hello all,

Are there any cases where an individual might test negative (outside of the window period) using HIV RNA PCR & antibody/antigen testing despite actually being positive?

Is it possible that someone might have some weird/rare mutation that causes the HIV RNA PCR test to not detect any HIV despite it being present?

If so, would that mutation also impact the HIV antibodies to where they are also not detectable?

Thank you for your time.

[Assistant] The tests dont look for single places; they check for a wide range of HIV components, and HIV effects. For a virus to avoid all the components that are tested for, it would no longer be a functional HIV.


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

[User] In the U.S., if the polio vaccination rate was the same as COVID-19, would we still have polio?

[Assistant] Yes. Polio's estimated r0 is 5 to 7. You would need vaccine coverage of at least 80-86% to even begin to reach herd immunity. Which means you would more realistically need 95+% coverage to really keep it knocked down.


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

[User]
eli5 Anti-Aircraft guns. WW1/WW2 era

How did soldiers control the altitude at which anti-aircraft ammunition (flak) detonated? How could they know if the flak rounds would go off at 5000 feet, 10,000 feet etc? Were they magnetized somehow to detonate near aircraft? First post. Please be kind. Lol.

[Assistant]
Early shells were detonated by a simple timer. Slight changes to the time meant explosions at different heights. Flak was a random shot in the dark, not very efficient.

During WW2 the British developed a rugged vacuum tube that could be used to make tiny radio transmitter/receiver. When close to metal aircraft, the radio signal would be reflected back to the receiver, triggering the explosion. This was the first proximity fuze.


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

[User]
[Avatar TLA/Korra] What if I'm the next Avatar but I don't really care about it? I just wanna stay in my peaceful village and live my normal life?

I have great mastery of all the bending of element, I've even had visits from a few emissaries from other nations telling me to come with them...but I want to stay in my village with my mom and dad, so I humbly declined. I don't really care about being some great being. I never asked to be the Avatar, it's great I have these powers but I'm not obliged to do anything and the problems of the world are not mine to fix. Can I just live my life like a normal person? Will I attract trouble?

[Assistant]
That's exactly what Aang wanted, and he tried to run from being Avatar as a result. The end result was the world got totally fucked up.

It's a heavy burden, but trying not to fulfill it has dire consequences. You're job is to keep the world in balance. You may argue you have no obligation to do it, but the world literally depends on you performing that duty.


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

[User]
How do scientists discover new ways of combating diseases? In other words, how do scientists determine how and what to start looking for to cure diseases like HIV/cancer/etc.?

I understand the scientific method, medical studies, and that sort of thing to determine whether a particular method of combating a disease is effective. What I'm having a harder time understanding is how we even begin to figure out that 'such and such' virus or bacteria or antibiotic or whatever is actually really specifically useful in getting rid of another particular kind of bacteria/virus.

[Assistant]
The major challenge in finding a new way to combat a disease is understanding the biology that underlies the disease itself. The approach to finding an answer to a biology question is rarely clear, and depends on the question being asked in the first place, so your question can only really be answered on a case-by-case basis. When we're looking for ways to treat a disease we therefore usually only have a partial/incomplete understanding of a disease, which tends to come back and bite us in clinical trials. Still, since it will be an extremely long time until we will be able to say that we 'fully' understand any disease, and we need treatments now, the show must go on. In pharma, there are two major drug discovery approaches: High throughput screening and rational drug design.

You can run a high throughput screen without even understanding very much about the etiology of the disease you are trying to combat. All you need is a decent model for your disease that you can grow quickly and at a small scale--if you are fighting a bacterium, you can use the bacteria you are trying to fight. If you are looking for a molecule that affects cancer cells, you can grow cancer cells in plates. Then, you can take a big library of different molecules (think: millions of different compounds at a big pharma company) and just try them all at a very small scale to see if any of them work. If you have a good model you can run these screens efficiently enough so that the effort is worthwhile. Taxol is a great example of a blockbuster chemotherapeutic that came out of a high throughput screen. The major drawback to running a high throughput screen is that your compound library is often untargeted, so you have no way of knowing if you are even barking up the right tree unless you work out a lot of the biology surrounding the disease first. Also, even though the sheer number of compounds in some of these libraries is very large, they often are biased towards compounds that are easy to make from a synthetic point of view, and therefore often do not cover as much 'chemical space' as the big number might lead you to believe.

Rational drug design requires a bit more knowledge about what molecular mechanisms underlie the disease in the first place. If you know that stopping the function of some protein would prevent your infectious microbe from being viable, or mitigate the growth of your tumor, then you can use your knowledge of chemistry to design a drug that will simply bind to that protein very tightly and stop it from functioning properly. This is a lot easier said than done--it is pretty tough to predict how a molecule will bind to a protein, and most of the computational models that we have to help us out are barely coming into their own. This approach has still been very successful though; Gleevec is the poster child of rational drug design and a quick read of its development history will probably give you a better idea of how rational drug design works.