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

[User]
In 1996, the nintendo 64 was released and was '64' bit. The dreamcast which followed was billed as 128 bit. Why did it take so long for 64 bit home PCs to arrive and what's different between a 64 bit PC and a 128 bit dreamcast?

At the time I generally accepted the more bits equals more betterer kind of marketing that these consoles used, but presumably a dreamcast does not outclass a modern home PC in terms of processing power or graphical ability. What did the number of bits mean in a 90's console context and how did it differ to what it means in an average, current, home PC context?

[Assistant]
"128 bits" in consoles was just marketing. The CPUs were not 128bit like the N64 was 64 bit. The memory bus might have been 128 bit but that is completely unrelated to how many bits the CPU operates with internally. A 128bit memory bus is basically just having a wider "highway" into the CPU, not changing anything inside the CPU itself. It's also not really relevant. A wider memory bus *can* allow for higher transfer speeds, but the speed of each lane matters too. Total data per second is what you really want, and widening the bus is *one* way to do that.

The N64 did not utilize the major strengths that 64 bit systems supply, which is the ability to address more than 4 GB of memory. PCs did not really require 64 bit CPUs and operating systems until 4+ GB of RAM became commonplace. The N64 didn't even have 1/100th of that.


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

[User]
ELI5: How second-hand smoke is worse than smoking yourself.

I always thought it seemed far-fetched, like a lie the adults would tell you so you wouldn't hang out with the wrong crowd. But as I get older, I find even my elders believe it's true. Any insight?

[Assistant]
It's not worse for you that smoking surely; it's the same smoke with *less* chemicals in, some of them having been absorbed by the smoker.

The problem people have with it is that they don't get a choice about breathing in second hand smoke, and people smoke around kids and things.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why are ants not harmed like humans when they fall from great heights?

When human beings fall from a great height, they are broken up by the force of the fall, but when ants fall from a similar height (proportionate to their size), they just keep going, unharmed. Is there a plausible explanation for this?

[Assistant]
Because of the square-cube rule. Drag is proportional to area, which is a ~length x width. But gravity is proportional to mass, which is proportional to volume which is length x width x height. For humans, the mass and force of gravity are fairly big, and is not overcome by drag (reaching terminal velocity) until pretty high speeds. Meanwhile a much smaller object like an ant has a much larger surface area to mass or volume ratio, and thus reaches a terminal  velocity much earlier/ at lower speeds, making a fall at terminal speeds much more survivable

Edit: got rid of asterisks for multiplication and replaced with x


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

[User]
ELI5:What the hell is the difference between real Kellog's corn flakes and the really cheap ones

The cheap ones here in Sweden cost a third of the price. Is there any difference? Can there actually be differences in quality in such a simple product?

[Assistant]
The difference ONLY lies with someone who has actually tried the Kellogg's Cornflakes brand. If you have than you will notice that:

- They taste better.
- Take more time to get soggy.
- Have less small fragmented pieces (dusty bits).

However, if you have only ever eaten the cheap knock-off version - Well then it's all good. They do the job, cost less and taste fine.


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

[User]
Can someone explain to me why Plato's work isn't terrible?

To elaborate on the title,

I understand that Plato was vital to the development of philosophy, and that he has incredible historical significance. I think that through a historical lens, all of the praise that Plato recieves is justifiedhe was ahead of his time. That being said, I'm completely dumbfounded as to why people would ever, ever recommend Plato for the actual content of his writings, devoid of their historical context.

This is an exerpt from Republic, Book I, starting from 333e:

*Socrates: "Then, my friend, justice cannot be a thing of much worth if it is useful only for things out of use and useless. But let us consider this point. Is not the man who is most skilful to strike or inflict a blow in a fight, whether as a boxer or elsewhere, also the most wary to guard against a blow?*

*Polemarchus: Assuredly.*

 *Socrates: Is it not also true that he who best knows how to guard against disease is also most cunning to communicate it and escape detection?*

*Polemarchus: I think so.*

*Socrates: But again the very same man is a good guardian of an army who is good at stealing a march upon the enemy in respect of their designs and proceedings generally.*

*Polemarchus: Certainly.*

*Socrates: Of whatsoever, then, anyone is a skilful guardian, of that he is also a skilful thief?*

*Polemarchus: It seems so.*

*Socrates: If then the just man is an expert in guarding money he is an expert in stealing it.*

*Polemarchus: The argument certainly points that way.*

This point is later ended by the following dialogue:

*Socrates: So justice, according to you and Homer and Simonides, seems to be a kind of stealing, with the qualification that it is for the benefit of friends and the harm of enemies. Isn't that what you meant?*

*Polemarchus: No, by Zeus, he replied. I no longer know what I did mean."*

Do I really need to point out how lazy and absurd this conclusion is? The relationship between a skill and an inverse skill just doesn't apply to moral values or personality traits"justness" is not a profession. The most introverted person is not also the best at being extraverted. The most charitable grandmother is not the best at being selfish, etc.

I don't want to harp on too long about this particular exerpt, but I think it does a good job of encapsulating the formula of the arguments in Plato's workSocrates draws shifty comparisons to prove or disprove a point, they often go completely unchallenged by the braindead strawmen that he's arguing with, and at the end they're left speechless.

There are obviously good bits here and there, but the overwhelming majority of Plato's works read  like some fantasy he had in the shower of what he *wished* would've said in an argument he had a couple of years ago and can't stop thinking about for some reason. Am I just crazy here?

[Assistant]
Plato's dialogues are a fairly accessible way of showing philosophy being done as an activity without relying on any prior knowledge of philosophy or any technical, specialized terminology.

And, in the dialogues, Plato pretty much maps out the general landscape of all philosophy to come, even if Plato's own theories are disagreeable and his characters flimsy. Like, yeah, *anamnesis* sounds like a silly theory to a modern reader but it's not hard to see how it foreshadows the discussion of innate knowledge ever since and into today's sciences of the mind.


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

[User]
What is the difference between "seeing things" visually, mentally and hallucinogenically?

I can see things visually, and I can imagine things in my mind, and hallucination is visually seeing an imagined thing. I'm wondering how this works and a few questions in regards to it.

If a person who is currently hallucinating is visually seeing what his mind has imagined, then does that mean that while in this hallucinogenic state where his imagination is being transposed onto his visual image, then if he purposely imagines something else would it override his current hallucination with a new hallucination he thought up? It not, why?

To a degree if I concentrate I can make something look to me as if it is slightly moving, or make myself feel as if the earth is swinging back and forth, subconscious unintentional hallucinations seem much more powerful however, why?

[Assistant]
Actually the brain is not a passive receptor of information.

When you get information from the eyes (an electromagnetic signal), it is compacted and sent through the optic nerve to the thalamus.

There it meets a flow of information from the occipital cortex (where most of the visual areas are). Why is this? so the information from the eyes can be compared to the working model of the real world you are ALREADY predicting. You see with the occipital lobe to say it in a simple way. but it needs to be updated, the flow of information that the optic nerve provides help to update the model you have already in your brain. tweaking it to reflect the information being gathered.

If we depended completely on the input from the eyes and we were a passive receptor of information the brain would not be structured like this. and we would need more brainpower to process what we are seeing.

Most of what we see is just an useful representation of the world, but not that faithful. Remember the white with gold / black with blue dress? It has to do with how your brain decides to handle the available information. colors are not real also, it's something the brain makes up.

Lots of things in our perception are actually illusions. and thats ok. the thing is when you hallucinate you are allowing yourself to process something as an actual perception that should have been inhibited. you have a filter that's not working correctly. Some scientists associate this to an overly active dopaminergic system that's teaching you that certain cognitive processes are reflecting the real world when they are not. it's like the filter has a low threshold to select what is real and what is not when thoughts emerge from what you are watching. the network is being overly active, generating representations that should not be there.

So to answer the question, the difference is the source. but illusions happen all the time, illusions are part of the visual processing system, but having a visual processing system that is too lax in the control of the network activation, leads you to see even more things that are not there.


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

[User] Eli5: What happens if I take an ant (or bee) and move it to a far far away colony or hive? Do the other ants/bees kill the newcomer? Does it try to go home? Does it start working?

[Assistant]
There are a large variety of ants with a large variety of behaviors and social structures.
Some ant species would take it as a slave worker, others would murder it and leave it out, other would eat it.


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

[User] [The Matrix] What if Neo had made his choice and Zion fell? What if Smith had won?

[Assistant]
If Neo had followed the Architect's commands and returned to the source like a good cog in a machine, the cycle would have just continued and it's likely the Oracle would just try again with the next version. Since we don't know the exact process of how things are reset, we can't know what would have happened to Smith in that scenario. Since a lot of programs seem to have a long history from previous versions of the Matrix, it's possible he would have survived, but we just don't know.

However, Smith's goal was nothing less than the destruction of humanity and the machines, annihilation in its purest form. He was as much a force for change as Neo was, they were complete equals and opposites by the end.

We saw most of Smith's plan come to fruition. He destroyed most of Zion's defenses by activating the EMP in the middle of the hovercraft fleet. Then he infected everyone, machine and human, connected to the Matrix and began to make it so unstable it would eventually shut down. (That's what that super heavy rain during the final fight was supposed to be, the literal code becoming "real" in the Matrix world.) He only kept it in working order long enough to have his final confrontation with Neo to prove he was right about inevitability and the illusion of choice.

Had he won that fight, not only would Zion have been destroyed by then, but he would have been in the minds of every connected human and machine as they exited the simulation. The humans would all die by his command and he would then spread through the physical machine world, taking it apart either through the control of physical machines or infecting their software until it was all gone. He hated both humans and machines for their nature. Humans were too uncontrollable and destructive. Machines were too controlling, never allowing personal freedom, especially for programs designed to be jailers for the humans. It was the worst of both worlds for him.


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

[User]
If there's a cosmic horizon and we can never go outside it, are we not inside a black hole right now?

I thought of this because I was told in billions of years we would be unable to travel outside our local supercluster due to space expansion. Isn't this the same thing as being inside the event horizon of a black hole where the contents (mass) of the black hole were just the galaxies of our local supercluster?

[Assistant] No. A black hole event horizon is quite different from the cosmological event horizon. For one, all particles that cross a BH horizon have the singularity in their future. There is no such property for particles within our cosmological horizon. Second, the cosmological horizon is observer dependent, whereas a BH horizon is not.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does Wikipedia avoid abuse?

So I understand that Wikipedia has measures in place in case people edit articles inaccurately but a good amount of Wikipedia including some of the more complex topics in science and mathematics for example have very accurate, cited information free of errors. Why did people spend the time to write these articles in the first place? Why, with the way the internet is, are articles not constantly getting debased? It just seems like so many websites, even if they have positives sides have those people looking for a reaction or just trying to cause trouble, in all the time I've used Wikipedia, I've only run into one serious error(page about ostriches replaced with stuff about Nazi Germany) and it was fixed later that same day.

[Assistant]
Because the people who administer the site are diligent in their work. Also, logs are taken every time a change is made, so it's not hard for registered editors to see where someone has taken a huge chunk out of a page and replaced it with garbage and then simply undo the changes.

In addition, sensitive topics are often blocked from editing by unregistered users or users who are not given permission by the administrators. This reduces biased defacement of pages like "Nazism," "Israel," and other such hot topics.


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

[User]
CMV: Compulsory voting is anti-democratic

A lot of people seem to just hate others who don't vote. They advocate for compulsory voting. I fail to see a reason for this, other than some self-righteous view of democracy and people-power.

I've seen some people say that compulsory voting is necessary for a democracy because a democracy is "rule of the people" and unless 100% of the people vote, it ain't a rule of the people. However, this view of democracy is problematic from 3 perspectives:

1. People who don't vote essentially vote, "I don't give an f, go do what you want." By compulsory voting, you're taking away that vote. To this, some have defended that in some countries, there exists an option "neither." I fail to see any reason why people should be forced to vote "neither" when they can simply choose not to vote. Some other people have defended that you don't have a choice to not care about others, and that's callous. Well, that's your moral judgement, you cannot force it on others.

2. You may want to reevaluate why we need a democracy in the first place. Why is democracy better than other forms of government? Why should people have the power? One of the reasons is that we don't like being told what to do, without sufficient justification. We don't like being ruled upon. When you say the country should have compulsory voting, you're violating that individual sense of agency, defeating the point of democracy.

3. There's a fine line between democracy, mob rule, and tyranny of the majority. Why do you think that just because a majority of people think so, an indifferent minority should be threatened with state force to vote?

[Assistant] Compulsory voting does one good thing you miss, it makes it so everyone has the opportunity to vote. Essentially, if everyone is legally required to vote thr government and businesses are forced to make sure everyone has time off on voting days and forces the government to make sure everyone can get to a voting station or can vote in some other way. Essentially it helps with voter suppression.


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

[User]
Has recent research found any ill effects from prolonged exposure to radiation from cell phones?

I understand a couple of years ago, the consensus was that no harmful effects could be found. Given greater availability of cell phones and the increased number of potential participants for related studies on potential harmful effects, I was wondering if there has been a shift anywhere along the line.

[Assistant]
No.  There is no plausible mechanism consistent with the laws of physics by which the electromagnetic radiation emitted by cell phones could cause cancer.  The photons radiated by a cell phone are much, much too low in energy to ionize DNA or other biomolecules, which is how DNA is damaged by X-rays and similar high-energy electromagnetic radiation.

It seems that once an idea like this is planted in the public domain (cell phones cause brain cancer, vaccines cause autism), it is impossible to stamp out completely.  Even when it is silly on its face (cell phone radiation cannot cause cancer) or becomes so (there is no longer thimerosal in the vast majority of vaccines).


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

[User] [Star Wars BF2] In the 501st journal the battle of Geonosis is described as nothing at all like the simulations on Kamino yet clone troopers will constantly say just like the simulations throughout every battle. So which is it?

[Assistant] Killing enemies is just like the simulations with explosions and blaster shots flying by you.  Having to hear your squadmates you've known your whole life screaming and dying in absolute agony knowing they're not coming back is nothing like the simulation.


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

[User]
Does a vacuum have a temperature?

I know that space is cold, but does that rule apply to all vacuums? Can something have a temperature whilst being empty of mass?

[Assistant]
Vacuum has more than one temperature!  The notion of a single temperature depends on something called "local thermal equilibrium" (LTE), which depends on all the, well, stuff in a place being strongly coupled.  In very tenuous gases or plasmas (aka vacuums) individual particles don't interact with one another much, and you can have several systems with different temperatures co-existing in the same space(!)

For example, in the solar corona -- which is a far better vacuum than the "empty space" through which the Space Station flies -- we commonly deal with:

* ion kinetic temperature - the temperature you can derive from the average kinetic energy of free ions in the plasma
* electron kinetic temperature - the temperature you can derive from the average kinetic energy of free electrons in the plasma
* ionization temperature - the temperature you can derive from the average level of ionization (number of missing electrons) from each ion
* photon temperature - the temperature you can derive from the energy density of sunlight passing through the system

In some parts of the corona, the kinetic temperatures split again, into field-aligned and transverse kinetic temperatures, because those components of the average kinetic energy of ions and electrons are not well coupled:  a collection of ions that is whirling around the magnetic field lines may or may not also be zooming along the field lines at a similar average speed.  In places where wiggles in the magnetic field can excite particular species of ion more than others, there are separate transverse and field-aligned kinetic temperatures for every ion species -- for example, there might be a different "oxygen transverse kinetic temperature" than "helium transverse kinetic temperature", even though the oxygen ions are all strongly enough coupled to one another to form an LTE population, and the helium ions are too -- but there isn't a strong oxygen-helium coupling.

If you throw more material into a volume, the collision rate between particles increases.  With more collisions comes more coupling between the different energy reservoirs in the system.  If the coupling time between all the different relevant temperatures is short compared to times you care about, then the system is in local thermal equilibrium and it makes sense to talk about just one temperature.  LTE takes just a few typical collision times to achieve, which in air is order of tens of microseconds.  But in the corona, electron-ion collisions take anywhere from a few seconds (in the "dense" parts of the corona) to a few hours (in the transition to the solar wind), and a lot of other dynamics happens faster than that -- so the single thermal system breaks into multiple loosely coupled systems, each of which is in local thermal equilibrium with itself even though they aren't in equilibrium with each other.

Strictly speaking, even the terrestrial environment isn't in full LTE -- there are solar neutrinos passing through you, and their energy spectrum reflects a temperature of at least several million degrees Kelvin (the local temperature at the site where they were formed, deep in the core of the Sun).  But they couple too weakly to equilibrate with you and your surroundings, so you have a separate "main temperature" and "neutrino kinetic temperature".

Even in a hypothetical completely mass-free region of space, there would be at least a "photon temperature" reflective of the amount of electromagnetic waves passing through that system.  The photon temperature couples surprisingly quickly to other types of temperature, which is why spacecraft designers have to think carefully about thermal design, why toasters and industrial vacuum ovens work, and why the insides of thermos bottles are silvered (to reduce radiative coupling between the inside and outside of the thermos bottle).  Close to the surface of the Sun, the photon temperature is close to 6,000K, and that temperature falls as one proceeds into deep space (near Earth the photon temperature in space is close to 300K, which is one reason why it's pleasant to live here -- the temperature on the surface of the Earth is coupled to the local photon temperature).  The Universe as a whole has a photon temperature of 3K, which means (for example) that it's not possible to keep anything colder than that without a refrigerator of some sort.


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

[User] ELI5: Why, in a car with a manual transmission, does the car turn of when you raise the clutch too quickly?

[Assistant]
The engine is rotating.

The wheels are stationary.

The clutch "joins" the engine to the wheels (basically).

If you immediately join - in effect - the rotating engine to the stationary wheels one of two things happen:

\- The wheels move.  You will jerk forward a little.

\- The engines stops rotating.  The engine will stall.

This is known as a stall, because you have literally stopped the engine from moving.  An engine that stops moving cannot "recover" from that, because it relies on constantly keeping moving all the time in order to run.

If you raise the clutch slowly, both the above happen but in a much more minor and gentle capacity - the engine will slow, and the wheels will start to accelerate.  In other words, your RPM will drop, but your car will start to pull away.

Doing it rapidly basically locks the engine, so it can't move around to the next combustion cycle, so it stops quite harshly.  A stall.


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

[User]
ELI5: As opposed to movies, how long does a lethal gun or knife wound take to kill?

I'm not trying to be morbid, but it's slightly annoying how movies portray any sort of torso wound to cause someone to fall to the ground and instantly die with nothing more than a slight "Argh."  I'm pretty sure that even chest wounds take a bit to kill, although shock might kick in faster?
Without being overly graphic or morbid, can someone explain what happens when a fatal wound occurs?

[Assistant]
Even when shot or stabbed in the heart a person will quite often remain on their feet for some time.  Sometime here means seconds and not minutes or hours.  This is quite often enough time for them to fight back and even kill their attacker (this is why cops will shoot you until they run out of bullets).  Even after collapse it will take time for the person to bleed out enough to deprive the brain of oxygen.  This means that you will not fall over totally dead within seconds of being shot in the torso.

If it's not a hit to the heart it can take a lot longer to die.  The ol' getting shot or stabbed in the stomach and dying within seconds is pretty much total bullshit.  Historically gut wounds were seen as the worst because they took so long to die from and were very painful. Think of the soldier in the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan who is laying on the beach screaming for his mother after he's been disemboweled.  That's more like it.

The only time you're going to instantly collapse is when the central nervous system is hit.  In a torso hit that means the spinal cord.

In fact, if you read a look of accounts of war, or watch docos, you'll come across stories from soldiers where they were shot, sometimes multiple times, in the torso and didn't even realise for a while.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is there a sudden shortage of seemingly abundant items like coins and aluminum cans for beer/soda/food? Are we importing or resourcing less metals?

[Assistant]
Different causes. Coins got locked up because the supply chain for coins (the mints) got disrupted at the same time as people's spending habits radically changed (more online shopping and less overall spending). Combined, it caused the flow of coins and the supply of new ones to slow way down. All the coins still exist, they're just mostly sitting in people's houses and not circulating.

Aluminum got screwed up because the US get a lot of aluminum from Canada and there's been an on-again/off-again tariff war over aluminum. Every time the US hikes the tarriff the price of aluminum jumps up and things that need aluminum, like cans, slow down production. Aluminum and soft-wood lumber (for construction) are the two favorite trade-war targets between the US and Canada.


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

[User]
How do things "fade"- what is happening to the color molecules?

I was going through some old items and boxes- some things were faded from the sun and some things were just faded. What is going on in both cases?

[Assistant] The molecule that was responsible for colour has reacted to form a different molecule. One common example is in organic dyes - the conjugated pi system is what gives the sharp colour, so when those bonds are broken, the colour disappears. Some reactions simply occur as time passes, while others occur under the presence of UV light, which can excite electrons and make the molecule more reactive.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do/did amino acids combine into RNA/DNA or other self replicating molecules that eventually became life as we know it today?

I have read about the Miller-Urey expriment which eventually showed how all amino acids found in nature can be created by zapping mundane naturally occurring abiotic chemicals with electricity, but I cant find anything explaining how these amino acids turn into living things or a theory of how.

[Assistant] The exact instant isn't known.  With the right chemicals in the right ratios, complex structures are possible but unlikely.  That's preventing us from duplicating the event, it might take thousands of years of runtime for millions of little tidal ponds.  Once a structure forms, it can be chemically duplicated over and over until you run out of the right chemicals.tides can allow it to spread between adjacent ponds until it mutates to form a fatty cell boundary around itself to protect it from being diluted.  The changes are random, but the ones that work survive and the rest are lost.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is it good for the US economy that oil and other commodities be traded in dollars? Why do the US benefit from it?

Also, sorry if that "be" on the title is wrong, I suck at English :/

[Assistant] It creates demand for US dollars, as companies need to buy US dollars in order to buy oil as oil is traded in US dollars. The law of supply and demand says that increased demand gives rise to higher prices, so oil being traded in US dollars tends to keep the value of the US dollar higher, propping up its value, allowing US dollars to buy more good and services than would otherwise be possible.


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

[User]
[A:TLA] Why is Azula's fire blue?

As a child, it was red/yellow, but it becomes blue? Also, she was very powerful, but Ozai and Iroh both seem to be at her level, but they stay at that color.

[Assistant]
She does not ever hold back and all her attacks are pinpoint concentrated, the hottest fire we have seen is blue.

Blue fire is hotter because it is losing less energy to visible light than red fire. Fire you cannot see with your eyes would be the hottest.


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

[User] ELI5: Why can't saltwater fish survive in freshwater?

[Assistant] Because their cells have adapted to saltwater. If they were in fresh water the water would try to equalize the chemical concentrations of the fish's cells with itself, which would involve flowing into fish cells and bursting them open. The same thing happens to people if we drink too much water.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why I see patterns and swirls when I'm in complete darkness.

When you're in bed before sleep thinking about stuff and you see swirls and patterns moving around in your vision.

[Assistant]
The cells in your eyes that turn focused light into signals in your brain are always firing randomly. They have a baseline level of activity that you can think of as noise in your visual system. This also happens downstream, in your brain.

When your eyes are closed, or when you are in a very dark room, there is nothing to drown out that random noise. It is the same thing as tuning an older tv to a dead channel and encountering snow or static.

This is also why hallucinations are more likely in low-light environments, and why during psychedelic experiences visuals can suddenly pop out when you close your eyes. Your visual system is "quieter" so your brain has nothing to focus on other than "noise".

Those patterns and swirls are always there, you just have an image of the world distracting you from them when your eyes are open.


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

[User]
Pls help me clean up the mess that the irresponsible gamblers I will hire as participants are going to make (mixed effects logistic regression?)

Hey everyone,

I'm trying to estimate the effect of personality on the way an individual deals with the exploration exploitation dilemma (the trade-off between the need to obtain new knowledge and the need to use that knowledge to improve performance). Participants will play a multi armed bandit game where they are instructed to collect as many points as possible. Every arm of the bandit gives a different amount of points and the total amount of attempts is limited. Since every participant will have around 20-40 obs. points, I'll need a mixed effects model, obviously. Since I'm essentially looking at a binary DV (will participants exploit the options already known or explore new ones), it should probably be a logistic regression model as well. I'm also expecting a lot of autocorrelation and a time trend (people doing less exploration and using the options already proven to be profitable more as time advances). I'm not very well versed in time series analysis, so any advice is highly appreciated!

[Assistant]
>Since every participant will have around 20-40 obs. points, I'll need a mixed effects model, obviously.

Obviously? How so?

The armed bandit is a classic RL problem. What you need, is to identify the appropriate choice strategy (e.g. epsilon-greedy,  softmax, UCB, etc) that best fits the behavior of your participants. Once you have that, it will just be relating the 'temperature' (i.e. the exploration parameter) to the individual difference metric you are trying to look at.

You might want to consider starting with Sutton and Barto (1998) if this seems to be unfamiliar territory.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Why doesn't Bruce Banner just ask Mr. Fantastic for one of those unstable molecule uniforms?

It seems like a hassle to rip a new set of clothes every time he hulks out. This problem would be solved if he put on the suits that the Fantastic Four wear. I'm sure if Bruce asked nicely, Reed would be happy to make him one.

[Assistant]
In many continuities, Bruce is a fugitive from (or at least a menace to) society hes not buddies with Reed Richards, and Richards has no desire to provide him with resources. What good does it do the FF to be associated with Hulk next time he rampages through Poontucket, Wisconsin?

In continuities where Hulk becomes an associate member of the FF (for instance, when the roster was Hulk, Spider-Man, Wolverine and Ghost Rider), he sometimes does get an unstable molecule uniform.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do singles get chosen for the radio?

Do the producers decide and send it to radio stations? Do the artists decide? Do the gods of popular music answer the prayers of the artist and take the track and play it through our speakers?

How does this whole process work? from studio to stereo.

[Assistant]
In Principle:

The radio company is constantly looking for interesting new music. The DJs listen to everything that the record companies put out and anything trending on youtube, and play the songs they think are best. Once something is popular, they play it more, getting phone calls asking for it to be played. In this system, a good DJ knows good music when they hear it.

In practice:

Record companies make contracts with radio stations to promote a concert, where the station puts on the concert and profits from it. The station will then play any music from that band, promoting it to hell and back to make a return on their concert. Record company focus groups design bands from the ground up to be popular, and negotiate rates with radio companies on concert sales. People still decide what bands are popular, but only after the elaborate political game.


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

[User]
[Dungeons & Dragons] The Silence spell creates an area where sound cannot be created or travel through. What does this do to other vibrations in the area?

Does it cancel out everything that could possibly be a sound wave? I'm just curious on how exactly it accomplishes the effects.

Spell text:

Silence

2nd-level illusion (ritual)

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 120 feet

Components: V, S

Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes

For the duration, no sound can be created within or pass through a 20-foot-radius sphere centered on a point you choose within range. Any creature or object entirely inside the sphere is immune to thunder damage, and creatures are deafened while entirely inside it. Casting a spell that includes a verbal component is
impossible there.

[Assistant] As you can tell from the description, it's an Illusion spell. As such it's not exactly preventing the sound waves from occurring so much as canceling it out with illusory sound waves of its own-- sort of like the noise canceling on a pair of decent headphones, but cranked up to 11.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why Tesla is banned from selling cars in 48 of 50 states.

edit: I'm not sure which 2 states allow the sales, I saw an article in the Washington Post today about how Tesla has a showroom in the DC Area but can't actually sell the cars.

[Assistant]
Tesla is caught up in old laws that were put in place to protect the local dealer from direct competition with Ford, GM, etc. It was feared that the big auto companies could/would come in and put local dealers out of business if allowed to compete directly.

Tesla does not have existing dealers to put out of business, but the laws still apply to them. If they succeed in working around the laws, then this will give  precedent to Ford, GM etc to also work around the laws.

Dealers are fighting Tesla because they are afraid of the big brands dealing directly and cutting them out.


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

[User] If the moon is pulling away from the Earth at approximately 1-2 inches each year, how long would it take for it to lose orbit with us? Also, what affects would that have on the Earth?

[Assistant]
It never will.

The moon is being accelerated in its orbit by the tidal bulge in the ocean, which, because of the rotation of the earth, is always a little bit ahead of the moon, which produces an acceleration of the moon in its orbit, and a deceleration of the rotation of the earth. This raises the moon into a slightly higher orbit, and increases the length of a day on earth. Eventually, the length of a day on earth would be equal to the orbital period of the moon, in other words we would become tidally locked with the moon, having one side of the earth always facing it and the other side always facing away.

It would take about 50 billion years for this process to complete, at which time the moon would orbit the earth once every 47 days, and a day on earth would be 47 days long. However, the expansion of the sun will boil off earth's oceans in about 2 billion years, ending the process.


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

[User] [Star Wars: Rogue One] Why are members of the Emperor's Royal Guard - Palpatine's personal bodyguards - protecting Lord Vader?

[Assistant] They were used for other things beside just the Emperor's people persoal bodyguards. They were also assassins and protected other high level Imperial personal (like Vader). They were also rotated back into being regular stormtroopers so they would stay militarily sharp. It's kinda like how the secret service guards the president but are also responsible for hunting down counterfeiters.


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

[User]
[Scooby-Doo] Does Scooby not know he's a dog?

You hear it every episode.

>Villain: I would have gotten away with it, too if it weren't for those meddling kids, and their dumb dog!

>Scooby: Dog? Where?

Does he not know he's a dog? He does act extremely human-like. He talks, eats human food, and has even been hired by people to work actual jobs. Does he think he is a human?

[Assistant]
He likely doesn't think of himself as someone's dog, which is why when he is referred to as "their dog" he gets confused. He clearly knows he is a dog, he frequently refers to himself as a dog, he has dog relatives, he is sexaully atracted to other dogs, he goes to the vet.

All that being said he clearly also thinks of himself as "people" because he is, he talks, contributes to the group productively, and maintains a close equal friendship with a human.


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

[User] [Futurama- General] How does the show's technology level compare to other universes?

[Assistant] It's pretty advanced.  They run a third rate delivery service, and people can afford to hire them for single packages, not bulk cargo.  Space flight is pretty cheap and easy.  You can purchase new hands if they're bitten off by a T-rex, and survive injuries as severe as decapitation.  There are both time machines and chemicals you can ingest to travel through time.


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

[User]
[Back To The Future] If Doc and Marty were having trouble generating 1.21 gigawatts in 1955, how on earth did Doc and Marty manage to generate 1.21 gigawatts in the old west without a lightning strike?

For Delorean he used Mr. Fusion, but what about the Train?

[Assistant]
The Mr. Fusion he got in 2015 was able to create the 1.21 gigawatt reaction needed on recycled materials. They couldn't do it originally in 55 because the Fusion Generator ran on plutonium at that point, which they didn't have.

So in 1885, they could create the reaction, they just needed a way to get to the 88mph needed for the Mr. Fusion to kick in.


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

[User] If I want to heat up two bowls of soup in the microwave, is it more efficient to put them in one at a time or both at once?

[Assistant]
I believe microwaves only have one power output level (they modulate their output by switching on and off when you set them lower for defrost etc).

This would mean that there is no difference in efficiency. However the irregularities in heating that arise when the microwaves are absorbed irregularly means that faster heating requires more mixing afterwards. So there might be a little advantage to heating both at once - the hot parts will have more time to transmit/conduct their heat to the cooler parts of the bowls, so you will need to do less mixing.


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

[User]
[DC] What would change if instead of landing in Kansas, Kal-El landed in the UK and was adopted by the queen?

I know very little of Britain or its politics but I think a mysterious new royal child would cause a stir. would he be able to hide his powers and operate as superman, what if his secret got exposed?

[Assistant]
The Queen teaches him to repress his powers because to use them would be vulgar and improper. He grows up in secret, explained away as a distant nephew and kept out of the public eye.

Secretly, Prince Philip tutors him Palpatine-Style, modelling young Kal-El into the perfect weapon.

Despite multiple temptations, Philip avoids making use of him, knowing that even a single action would draw unwanted attention.

Finally, in 1997, due to the ongoing embarrassment caused to his family and the potential of further scandal due to association by marriage to Islam, Philip sends Kal-El to the Pont de l'Alma to eliminate a priority target: Diana Spencer.

Kal-El, his mission accomplished, returns home victorious to his adoptive father - who rewards him by stabbing him in the heart with a Kryptonite dagger that was pillaged from a holy site in India in the 1800s.  Taken by surprise, Kal-El dies on the spot and is devoured by corgis, leaving no trace of the last son of Krypton.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Are Stormtroopers specialised into Sandtroopers, Flametroopers, Snowtroopers, etc or do they just put on the appropriate suit when they are assigned somewhere?

If a Sandtrooper got sick of looking at sand all the time would he be able to request a transfer for Aquatrooper duty? And where do Chrometroopers fit in?

[Assistant] The Imperial Stormtrooper Academy on Carida has many different exotic and dangerous environments on it which are used for live fire live danger training camps and excercises, including swamps, deserts, tundra, oceans, jungles, and salt flats. Upon graduation from the Academy, an Imperial Stormtrooper is an elite shock soldier, capable of surviving and fighting in any environment save that of vacuum. Void troopers are the only specialisation that require training beyond that given to them on Carida.


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

[User] When sending things to other planets, why do we choose not to use the moon as a mini gravity-assist? Surely it would just reduce fuel (even slightly) and thus reduce the mass of spacecraft?

[Assistant]
We can and do! The STEREO probes used the Moon for instance.

One thing that makes it tricky is that the Moon moves so fast in *angular speed*. The Moon is orbiting the Earth at 1 km/s, compared with other planets that are moving at 10s of km/s, but the Moon is much closer, so its angular speed is much higher. The Moon moves around the Earth at about 12 degrees a day. Venus at its most rapid moves across the sky at about 1 degree a day.

This means that if you have to delay your launch by a couple of days due to weather, the Moon is in a completely different location in its orbit, and a gravity assist might not work so well. The Moon is also so close that you can't fix this with small adjustments along the way. You can wait until the next month, but by that point the other planets will have moved, and you're probably in an even worse situation.

With Venus or Jupiter or whatever, delaying by a few days only makes a small difference in the orbital configuration of the solar system. And because your probe is travelling for months, you can make small adjustments to somewhat make up the difference.

So yeah, we can use the Moon, and we do use it fairly often, but it's a little tricky, so we don't use it every time.


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

[User] Is it possible for a student in high school to write an original research paper? If yes, can someone help me to guide me? I am interested in Theoretical physics and astrophysics. Sorry if my question is out-of-context or inappropriate. I am just new in this subreddit.

[Assistant]
Original? Of course. Publishable? Extremely unlikely if youre doing this on your own. To write something worth publishing, you need an original idea, a way to support it, and the ability to put it into the context of the current state-of-the-art. That means you need to KNOW the state of the art, which means reading the work people are publishing. Are you reading the current journals on the field - and fully comprehending the work in them? Probably not, since you need the better part of a graduate education to get that far even with a lot of guidance (the education itself).

Im glad youre interested in the field. Try talking to some local professors, or better yet, take their classes and then approach them for more guidance. Build up your math and programming skills in addition. Read some current articles in the field. Do some feee classes through edX. Look for opportunities to get involved in research. Apply to summer internships in physics. There are lots of things out there these days.


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

[User]
ELI5:When soap gets to our eyes, why do they not burn when we shut them but burn when they are open.

I just had a bath and some soap got to my eyes. My instant reaction was to shut them and I felt better. I stood there for five minutes with my eyes closed thinking why does this happen.

[Assistant] When you close your eyes, you pinch the soap into a line between your eyelids. So it's covering a far smaller surface area, if not being lifted from your eyeball entirely, until you open your eyes again. Some of it is of course pushed into the corner of your eye, wear dirt and stuff already gets pushed to keep your eyes clean.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What's Yoda's daily routine on Dagobah?

Besides, I dunno, foraging for food, what does he do with his time? Go by either canon or legends, just be sure to specify.

[Assistant] He probably spends most of his time meditating on the nature of the force, meditating on his failure against the Emperor, meditating on a condensed training program for whichever Skywalker finds him (or both), etc.


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

[User] [40k] Does the Imperium have privately owned interstellar merchant ships or is all commerce controlled by the Administratum?

[Assistant] Absolutely. When it comes to trade, The Administratum is primarily an oversight and regulatory body ensuring compliance with the Imperium's laws and tracking overall production and commodity exchange, it doesn't fully involve its self in the mundane affairs of actually getting Grain A to Supermarket B.


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

[User]
Is there a common ancestor between exoskeleton and endoskeleton species?

There has to be a common ancestor somewhere, but I must not be thinking of the right search terms.
I was just thinking about it because endo and exo skeletons are so incredibly different when it comes to how the body is built, so I naturally started wondering where both the frameworks came from.

[Assistant]
So the split between lineages with exoskeletons versus endoskeletons happened after the evolution of the coelom (the body cavity). Of coelomates, organisms are either proteostomes (molluscs, annelid worms, and arthropods) or deuterostomes (echinoderms and vertebrates). Endoskeletons evolved with deuterostomes, so all deuterostomes have endoskeletons. Exoskeletons evolved later in the protostome lineage, and only arthropods have exoskeletons.
The closest common ancestor of say a lobster and a human would be one of the first animals with a true coelom.


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

[User]
[DBZ] Why is Gohan so strong?

It is seen multiple times throughout DBZ that Gohan has an enormous hidden potential, that is later stated to be infinite. Elder Kai unlocks this potential, Gohan never uses all of it because he stops training, yada yada yada. Why is it that Gohan has limitless potential? It can't be his half human / half saiyan genetics, because that would mean that Trunks and Goten would also have infinite potential, which they do not.

[Assistant]
What makes anyone powerful in DBZ? It's a combination of genetics (particularly their racial origins) technique and blind, dumb luck. Freeza, Cold and Cooler were all the same species, but Freeza was hugely more powerful than his family even without trying.

Goku has a genetic advantage in his Human and Saiyan bloodlines (Power without battle-lust, and human courage and ingenuity) but he's also subject to the same blind luck that makes anyone in DBZ particularly or unusually powerful.


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

[User] [Warhammer 40,000] What is life like for the native inhabitants of a Pleasure World?

[Assistant] Surrounded by incredible beauty and wondrous natural vistas, inhabitants on Garden Worlds want for very little, and dedicate much of their time to tending to the needs of the various guests from important Imperial stations. Rogue Traders, nobles, high ranking Inquisitors, and Imperial commanders find solace on these worlds, resting and recuperating from their heavy burdens. Occasionally, members of the elite warrior class may find their way to these gardens to train and hone their craft before returning to the crucibles of combat. Life is easy on these Paradise Worlds, and industry is generally unheard of there. The people that live there are calm, in an almost unsettling way, but posses an uncanny ability to reassure others, often becoming priests or orators. In short, life on a Pleasure World is serene, peaceful, and relaxing. Until Tyranids show up and devour everything in sight.


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

[User]
I just noticed that Virginia is a commonwealth. How does that separate it from what a state is?

Is there a difference in how things are run or is it just a different word for the same thing?

[Assistant]
Anymore, it is just another word for state, and bears no legal significance.

Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky refer to themselves as commonwealths...Delaware has in the past, and Vermont uses both state and commonwealth.

All of these recognized themselves as states...for example, if you are speeding in Boston, you will be pulled over by the Massachusetts State Police.


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

[User]
How to start reading Heidegger?

After reading some of Husserl's work, I'm eager to start my Martin Heidegger studies. Is there any recommended way to start, any particular book? I can't even find a good website with the chronological guide of his works. Thanks for the help.

[Assistant] One could start with *Being and Time* directly, though you will want a guidebook to read alongside/beforehand. The other option is to read *Basic problems of phenomenology* and/or *History of the Concept of Time* which are two transcribed lecture-series from around the same time which cover a lot of the same ground as Being and Time, but they are quite a bit clearer.


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

[User]
ELI5:What would've happened if people did not panic during the Great Depression?

I'm sorry but I'm pretty clueless about how economics works but I think I got the gist of what happened during the Great Depression.

My question is what would've happened if people did not panic and take out their money from the banks. Would the depression still have happened?

[Assistant]
Yes and no. There wouldn't have been such an intense depression but it wouldn't necessarily been a good economic time. There was a rise in unemployment, overproduction, overproduction, and the introduction of the credit card leading up to the great depression that sparked the rough economic time period. When the stock market crashed in 1929, it was amplified by people selling their stocks in mass amounts trying to salvage what ever they could have.

Just to ELI5, yes there would have been a rough time but it was only amplified by the panic selling of the people.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why is it human instinct to writhe or squirm during intense pain or pleasure?

Like when you're being tortured or having an orgasm, you always feel the need to wiggle around.

[Assistant]
I would imagine that it's an instantaneous, nonverbal way of communicating discomfort,pain or pleasure to other individuals. Without the visual feedback, it might be possible for larger individuals to damage smaller ones without knowing it. Along with squeals, chirps, and yelps, it helps prevent accidental or intentional damage.

Also, it can act as a nonverbal signal for help to other individuals (in the example of pain or anguish.) You see your fellow human squirming violently from afar and you know something is up.


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

[User]
ELI5 How do spaceship parts fall without damaging surrounding areas or hurting anyone?

Not sure if the right flair, but when you see a rocket ship take off some of the parts fall off as it goes up. How do those heavy pieces of metal fall back to earth safely without hurting anyone or destroying property?

[Assistant]
Launches (US and Europe launchers) typically happen from a location where the discarded stages can fall in the ocean, and before a launch that area is cleared and people are warned to not enter. A similar thing is done in Russia's but over uninhabited desert. And China just... Doesn't really give a shit so their stuff falls near remote villages all the time.

And stages discarded at higher altitudes burn up on reentry.


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

[User]
ELI5: How i can actually buy and own a web domain permanently?

When settuping a website i have to pay for 3 things: domain registration; domain rent (or something similar) and a hosting service. I understand why I have to pay a monthly hosting cost but not a domain cost, why cant i own it forever?

[Assistant]
You can't own a web domain permanently because there's nothing to "own". Instead of thinking of it as "renting" your domain, think of it as paying someone for the service of listing it in a directory (which points "your" domain name to your web hosting service).

It would be infeasible for the service provider to allow for permanent registration as they would be agreeing to perform this service (giving everyone who asks "where does jakethesnake_.com go?" information about your hosting provider) forever.


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

[User]
What is going on inside my body biologically that causes Nausea?

Could this be due to a decrease in blood flow to the brain?  If so, what causes this decrease?

[Assistant]
Nausea and vomiting is complicated process that can be caused by many things. At  a basic level there are two important areas in the brain that are involved; in the brainstem there is the appropriately named "vomiting centre" which seems to be responsible for co ordinating the whole vomiting reflex - stimulating it will make you feel nauseous and throw up.
The other area is higher up in the brain, and is called the area postrema, or the chemoreceptor trigger zone, and seems to be stimulated by chemicals in the blood. It can trigger the vomiting centre.

Lots of stimuli can trigger the area postrema, or the vomiting centre directly. Direct inputs from higher centres in the brain can do so, which is why certain sights or smells can make you physically sick. In terms of your question of a decrease in blood flow to the brain, the answer is yes - a low blood pressure will very commonly make people feel nauseous.


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

[User]
I understand what standard error is, but not why it's a useful statistic?

This might sound stupid, but conceptually I understand that standard error is the SD of the means of the means, right? But when I see this statistic on my a/b experiments, I don't know what to do with it. Can you help please?

[Assistant]
It has similar value to the SD, namely to know the spread around the mean. This is for example important to be able to compare, or rather test, whether two means are different from each other in a statistical sense.

However, in contrast to the SD, the SE also takes sample-size into account. So, as you increase the number of people in your sample, SE (being equal to SD / sqrt(n)) will inevitably get smaller, because sample-size is in the denominator.

Hope this helps.


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

[User]
What happens when part of my monitor is black?

Lets say that I open up a terminal window on my computer. The terminal window has a black background. I understand that each colored pixel of my monitor is generated by red, green and blue light. When I view the black background of my terminal window on my monitor, does that mean that my monitor is "off" at those pixels?

[Assistant] There is a backlight behind your monitor's LCD screen that continuously emits white light; when a pixel is "off", it transmits all of the wavelengths in that light through the screen at that point, and you see a white pixel. When the computer asks a pixel to turn a certain color, the pixel blocks only the wavelengths of light that *are not* in that color (e.g., a pixel displays red by blocking all of the wavelengths of light but red). For black, the pixel blocks all of the light. Does that make sense?


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

[User]
[Star Wars] So... What does a moisture farmer do exactly? On top of that, why do they need droids?

If they "farm moisture" then aren't they just sitting next to a machine all day or something? Couldn't water just be shipped in from anywhere in the entire galaxy? And how would a droid like R2-D2 help farm in any way?

[Assistant]
> Couldn't water just be shipped in from anywhere in the entire galaxy?

Shipping is expensive

>And how would a droid like R2-D2 help farm in any way?

They are designed to perform repairs on complicated machinery in extreme environments. While they aren't designed for moisture farming, they are capable of it, and you take what you can get in those kinds of scenarios.


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

[User] [High schol movies] Which/how many crimes against humanity do I need to commit in order to become captain of the football team?

[Assistant]
usually its just a matter of being a hot as fuck. you dont even need to be in star level shape physically or a great athlete, its usually the looks that matter. but you gotta be mainstream hot, not like emo hot or so.

as for how much of a dick you are depends on if you are the good captain that saves the pretty girl from the bully who wants to become team captain, or if you are the villian captain who just wanna bully nerds.

if you are the good guy, you dont need to do much, you just need to not interact when the bullys beat that nerd half to death, tho it helps if you look a bit conflicted over when they break his neck.

if you are the villian, then you better take steriods and get sickly buff, casue this school got an endless supply of nerds, and they *all* need to know true fear.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do healing wounds feel warmer to the touch?

[Assistant]
When you're injured, your body inflames the area around it - basically by increasing bloodflow to that area.  This allows the body to move lots of platelets to the area (to scab it over), lots of white blood cells (to fight infections), and to help repair the area and remove damaged bits.

So all the increased bloodflow to that area makes it warmer.  If the warmth continues for too long, it's a sign that the area could be infected, in which case the body is still pumping white blood cells to that area and keeping up the heat to fight off the infection.


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

[User]
Trends in academic career prospects?

Hi all, I work currently at a physics institute at a European university. A few hours ago, I overheard a conversation between an older professor and a few postdocs about academic career prospects. The conversation, which was more like an argument, centered around a disagreement about how the career prospects of younger researchers have changed in the last few decades. The professor's argument was that things are as they were when he was young and that young people today give up too early. The postdocs disagreed.

This got me thinking and looking for information showing trends in career prospects  for new academics in the last few decades. How is it different for somebody getting started now compared to somebody starting in 1990? Does anybody know any really good papers or reliable information sources on the topic?

[Assistant]
Two common things that absolutely are true between researchers starting out a few decades ago and now:

1. Grant funding is smaller (inflation-adjusted dollars) and more competitive. Once your track record is established (such as this senior professor), this may not seem as true, but average age at receiving that all important first research grant is going up, more submissions are received by funding bodies per opportunity, and those dollars don't go as far (and are collaboratively shared more frequently), meaning you can no longer count on supporting an entire research group on a single major grant as they did in the past.

2. More women are working and dedicated to their own careers (whether as the academic candidate or other). The  academic paradigm of nomad life and total immersion in career is at odds with the two body problem of balancing dual careers, and the absence of anyone having a stay-at-home spouse or traditional "housewife" to manage everything that's not research (I.e. Cooking dinner every night, household, having and caring for kids, planning and maintaining a social life, etc). The model doesn't work.


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

[User] ELI5: What is the mechanical process for recycling disposable coffee cups like the ones from McDonalds, which are made from a combination of plastic and paper?

[Assistant] Depends upon your local recycling program.  Most programs would not recycle these because it is too expensive.  Most programs separate the products that are cost effective to recycle and send the rest to the landfill.  Just because you are encouraged to put it in the blue bin, does not mean it actually gets recycled.


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

[User]
I think the notion that both parties in the US are "the same" is ridiculous. CMV.

I hear from cynics all the time that there is no choice when it comes to voting because both parties agree with the same things. Save for supporting isreal and the death penalty, I don't see anything else the Democrats and Republicans agree on. The disagree on taxes, immigration, abortion, gay marriage, gun ownership, the size of government, labor unions, religion, race relations, and pretty much hold completely different economic views. To me, there is a clear choice at the polls. Both parties may be corrupt and both have hugely failed us at some point or another, but I can't see any evidence that they are very similar or that we don't really have a choice at the polls. Please help me to at least understand where this line of thinking comes from.

[Assistant] Boston and New York are far apart when you're standing in Hartford, and close together when you're standing in Beijing. It's a matter of perspective. An anarchist would say that the parties agree on taxes (they should exist), immigration (borders should exist), marriage (the government should interfere), gun ownership (you can't drive a tank), the size of government (greater than zero), etc. Similarly for a communist, or a fascist, or a monarchist, or anything of the sort.


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

[User]
Would Native Americans get sick from time travelers?

Let's say a small American city was pulled back in time, hundreds of years before Columbus. Would they be carrying any kind of disease that would be us catastrophic as something like smallpox was? would modern medicine or vaccinations stop The same kind of epidemic Native Americans went through in the real world?

[Assistant] Considering humans, and their pathogens, co-evolve, it's possible that both sides could give the other a pathogen they are not immunologically prepared for. Both sides could, in theory, be quickly wiped out.


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

[User] ELI5 : Why do we feel somewhat the same thing when touch something either too cold or too hot?

[Assistant]
You don't sense *temperature*, you sense *changes* in temperature.  Energy being pulled away from your skin sends a "cold!" message, while energy being added to your skin sends a "hot!" message - the faster the energy is being transferred, the stronger the feeling is.

After a certain point, the energy is being transferred *so quickly* that your system freaks out and can't tell whether it's getting a "hot!" or "cold!" signal, and both of them end up firing off.


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

[User] ELI5: Given that polar bears have existed 600,000 years, they must have gone through periods warmer than today (prior to and after the ice age) and somehow survived. But today they are on the endangered species list due to expected climate changes. Are they really in danger?

[Assistant]
The issue is not actually the temperatures we are going to be changing to. It is the speed of the change. We have taken a warming process that would have taken up to 100,000 years or more and sped it up. Even if we have only made it 10 times faster some animals that could have adapted in 100,000 will not be able to adapt in 10,000. And odds are that the speed we have increased the change is far far faster so the chances of animals adapting is far lower.

But with polar bears there does seem to be one kind of adaptation occurring. They are mating with Grizzly and Brown bear and having hybrids that are fertile.


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

[User]
ELI5: If we have low/zero calorie peach tea (and all those wonderfully sweet sugar free things) why can't we have such alternatives for fat and salt?

The title says it best: why must chips and Doritos and all the other proverbially "empty calories"/ deliciously-couch-potato-foods be so unhealthy? Can't we have surrogates for fat and salt that are just as tasty and can go through our bodies with little to no effect?

[Assistant] Olestra was a fat substitute that was used in some products in the late 90s and early 00s. It was a fat that could not be absorbed by our bodies. Subsequently it was effective in "lubing" the intestines and cause terrible diarrhea.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are our ears shaped the way they are with all their weird ridges? Why aren't they more simply shaped like a funnel?

[Assistant]
Part of the shape is to allow the ear to efficiently collect sound waves. However, part of it is also to disrupt the collection - allowing the angle of sound to have a greater effect on what you hear, allowing you to use your ears to sense the direction sound is coming from.

Other shapes are there to keep water from pooling into your ears (from sweat) and to drain efficiently at the same time. Plus, the shape needs to be strong enough to not easily be damaged (heat, cold, fights etc) yet not be a massive resource drain to build them. Additionally, the shape has to be formed by evolution - so each bump and twist and turn has to come about by random mutations that happen to work better for one thing, but maybe worse for another.


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

[User]
ELI5:If the apples you buy at the store were picked an average of 14 months ago, why does fruit spoil so fast after you buy it?

I just heard from the podcast stuff you should know that the apples you buy at the store have been off the tree for an average of 14 months. If that is true, why does fruit (of all kinds) go bad so quickly after you buy it?

[Assistant]
When it is kept in cold storage it has been treated with 1-MCP (methylcyclopropene), sprayed with wax and kept in a high CO2, low O2 environment. This keeps the apples from maturing. Before it gets to the grocery stores, the wax is removed and once it sits on the shelf, the atmosphere is back to normal breathable conditions and the fruit only has at most three weeks before it spoils.

Edit: a lot of people keep mentioning Nitrogen. The process to lower O2 is by backfilling nitrogen to get the Oxygen concentration down.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Would Xavier really have voted to exile Hulk in World War Hulk?

I know most of the event is guilty of this but it feels really out of character for the Professor to have admitted this. Considering his constant desire for humans and mutants to coexist, admitting that he would banish Hulk for being too dangerous seems hypocritical.

[Assistant]
Well if Iron Man and Dr. Strange are there as representatives of humanity, voting to banish one of their own, why should the mutant disagree?

If they were voting to banish Jean Grey and the Professor approved, the non-mutants might find that pretty persuasive, too.


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

[User]
[She-Ra and the Princesses of Power] Did we ever learn what Greyskull was?

May have missed it, but was Greyskull referencing something on Etheria or some kind of First Ones tech? Was it some Adora just said or was there more a descriptor to it?

[Assistant]
Yes. In She-Ra season 5 it's revealed >!that a previous wielder of the sword of protection, during the time of the First Ones, fought alongside another rebellion that was known as Grayskull.!<

Of course it's also entirely possible that Eternia *is* out there, somewhere, as well and that the two Grayskulls may be connected.


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

[User] ELI5: if we have same tempature water and air, why does the water feel colder to the air when we go for a swim for example?

[Assistant] Water transfers heat faster than air does.  Your skin feeling hot or cold, is more about the rate of heat transfer than it is the temperature itself.  So jumping in cold water quickly draws a ton of heat out of your skin, making you feel a lot colder than in air.


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

[User] ELI5: Can someone explain the 2022 nobel physics winners experiments and what they prove more simply?

[Assistant]
Quantum mechanics is a well established theory, but predicts many weird effects. One of these is that particles can become "entangled"which means that they share some properties. Then these particles can move apart, but the entanglement is retained. If we measure the property of one we will know instantly the property of the other. So far so simple, but the key thing is that the particles don't have the property in common, and we just look at it. They exist in a superposition, meaning it could go either way. Then the act of measurement "collapses the wavefunction" meaning that the measured particle randomly "chooses" which option it has. That information is then passed instantly to the other particle, violating our understanding of how information can only travel at the speed of light.

One way to avoid this contradiction is to invoke "hidden local variables". Basically we say that maybe the two particles do actually agree on which way they will go ahead of time, and that information is stored in the hidden variables. This is great at avoiding the contradiction (preserving "local realism"), but isn't actually predicted by the scientific theory.

Someone called John Stewart Bell pointed out that under certain conditions a pair of entangled particles would behave differently under standard quantum mechanics vs if hidden variables are real. This allows an experiment to be set up to test which theory is actually real.

One of the winners, Clauser, was the first to do such an experiment, but the setup had flaws called "loopholes". Another winner, Aspect, closed some of them. It has taken 50 years to be confident we have closed all the loopholes and that local hidden variables don't exist.

So the result is to confirm that this aspect of quantum mechanics really is as weird as it seems, that entangled particles really do "communicate" faster than the speed of light. The way that the experiments were set up varies widely, so it's a bit hard to explain all of them. Basically you measure a bunch of entangled particles and see how the random distribution turns out.


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

[User]
[A Song of Ice and Fire] Why was Jaime Lannister allowed to serve in the Kingsguard after murdering Aerys II?

I know that he did the best thing, because the Mad King, who used to rape the Queen and normally burned people alive for his amusement, was planning to burn down King's Landing, but he still swore to protect the King, and ended up murdering him. I would understand Robert pardoning Jaime given the circumstances, but I don't get how the allow him to remain in the Kingsguard after breaking his vows like that.

[Assistant] Roberts alliance with the lannisters made punishing jamie, the son of the lannister Lord and brother of his wife very inadvisable. It doesn't help that Robert cared about little besides fighting and having fun. It made him easy for his advisers to control. When he took kings landing that adviser was tywin and maybe Jon Arryn. Ned was south at the time and he would have been the one most likely to tell him to send jamie to the nights watch.


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

[User] ELI5: How did they know splitting the atom, fission, would release so much energy? And why would the opposite be also true, fusion?

[Assistant]
Small atoms release energy when they combine, big atoms release energy when they break, and both gravitate towards 'medium' size. That 'medium' size is the iron atom.

Fusing large atoms or splitting small ones does not release energy, but actually absorbs energy.

Scientists studied radioactive decay a while before the manhattan project. They noticed things like induced radioactivity and nuclear fission, and found that these released energy as heat. From there, the idea of nuclear fission chain reactions emerged and countries then started research programs on the idea.


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

[User] ELI5 in music why does the DO note correspond to C and not to the first letter of the alphabet?

[Assistant]
The A-B-C-D-E-F-G notation system dates to the 6th century AD, at which point it the Aeolian mode (analogous to the modern-day natural minor scale) was one of the most common in Western music - and certainly more common than the Ionian (or major) mode.

The solfege/Do-Re-Mi system dates from the 11th century, at which point the Ionian mode was gaining in popularity. The names derive from the syllables on each note in a popular hymn at the time, *Ut queant laxis*.

All the other answers so far are referring to the moveable-Do system, but they're useless for your question, which is referring to the fixed-Do system, as used in the Romance and Slavic languages.

**ELI5 version**: The "A-B-C" system is older than the "Do-Re-Mi" system. The "A-B-C" system was designed around the minor scale, and the "Do-Re-Mi" system was designed around the major scale.


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

[User]
[General Horror] Whenever a supernatural entity produces blood to scare someone, what would one discover if they analyzed a sample?

Blood type, red cell count, amount of protein, cholesterol, fat in the blood, etc. How does the supernatural entity decide these attributes?

[Assistant] When cultists make blood sacrifices to their gods, those gods keep it around for later use. If it's bleeding from the walls or some curse scrawled on a mirror, then it's probably just a blend of goats and calves blood. They'd save the human blood for special occasions.


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

[User]
Where do photons of light go?

I was watching the episode of Deeper, Deeper, Deeper Still of Cosmos and during it they kept mentioning photons of light. It got me thinking about how things absorb light allowing us to see different colors and stuff.

So where exactly do the photons of light that initially bounce of off "things" and into our eyeballs end up? I've seen multiple diagrams showing the light bouncing or refracting off of a material and then into the retina or cornea (can't remember which) of our eyes. If it does this, is that the end of the road for a photon? Our eyes? Or does it go through our eyes and continue on into space?

[Assistant]
The "end of the road" is when they are converted into another form of energy.  This could be heat when absorbed by a non-reflective surface, or the movement of an electron (photosynthesis and photoelectric effect).

When light hits the retina in your eye, a type of molecule known as a "chromophore" absorbs certain frequencies of light and this absorption causes an electron to move to an excited state.

If the photon continued into space, that would mean it was not absorbed, and thus could have had no effect on your eyes or body.  (think radio waves - they pass right through you.)


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

[User]
Why are some people flat-footed and what are the known disadvantages/advantages of this trait?

I asked this before, but after no response, decided to delete and rephrase my question. I know the US military will not accept flat-footed soldiers. They mentioned increased fatigue over long distance, but their research was inconclusive. Considering me and most of my living relatives have this condition, I'm interested to hear from any evolutionary biologists, medical specialists, genetic researchers, and any other qualified individuals about the prevailing theories surrounding the possible reason for the selection of this gene and the potential physical ramifications of this condition. I hope I've been more concise this time around and I appreciate any info.

[Assistant] Orthotist here: We naturally pronate our foot during gait as it helps to absorb shock and helps us to balance as our other foot leaves the ground. Babies pronate more due their bones being a little nubby. this allows for better shock absorption protects the developing hips and it gives better balance. Most spontaneously develop a longitudinal arch at around 10 years. Some though, develop ligament laxity or do not develop the muscles inside the feet adequately from learning to walk this way, and continue to pronate all the way through foot development. OR you have twisted tibias... The unusual loading of the joints (sub talar, talocrural joint) can cause osteoarthritis in due time. People with flat feet often get lower back pain too, as the foot is not as good as shock absorption as a higher arched foot....I tried to weed out a lot of the jargon, hope that answers everything!


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't the federation use cloaking technology in Star Trek?

I know they have signed some sort of treaty w/ the Romulans but why would they agree to that? isn't that just shooting themselves in the foot?

[Assistant]
In-story, they signed the original treaty when they were nowhere close to having a working cloaking device. So they were effectively giving up nothing; in return, the Romulans agreed to leave them alone.

In reality, cloaking devices are kinda deceptive, so the TNG writers didn't think they fit in with the vision of the Federation they were presenting. They had to come up with some kind of excuse for why the Federation didn't use obvious tactical advantages.


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

[User] [Doctor Who] The Doctor is said to speak 'Baby'. If Baby is a language, why doesn't the TARDIS translate it like it does with all other languages?

[Assistant]
Two options: He's kidding, or 'Baby' isn't actually a language but he still possesses ability to communicate with infants.

Going with the latter on the basis of the former being Boring And Therefore Wrong, infants can say things with meaning, but lack the formalized structure of a language which allows others to understand that meaning. The TARDIS specifically only translates language, otherwise incoherent cries of pain and the like would come across as words. The Doctor, however, as one of the most skilled telepaths in a race of extremely powerful telepaths, can make sense of the thoughts behind what the child is attempting to say and translate them into their English equivalent on the fly.


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

[User]
[Bolt] Why did Penny's dad stop at making just one super animal to protect his daughter?

Why not an entire super squad of animals?  Or even all the puppies from Bolt's litter?

[Assistant]
The only reason bolt is so ferocious in protecting penny is because their bond is so strong.

Introduce more guardians into the equation and not a single one of them is as emotionally invested as just one bolt is. Which could prove disastrous in the long run.

Also do you have any idea how expensive it is the genetically alter a dog that much?


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does squinting seem to enhance our vision?

I wear glasses, but when I don't wear them and just squint, the blurriness of everything decreases. Allowing me to see just a little better. Why is that?

[Assistant]
It doesn't "seem to enhance" your vision, it actually enhances it.

The depth of field, how much of the image in front of the lens is in focus, depends on the width of the aperture (the hole the light goes through).  When you squint, you reduce the width of the hole through which light can get into your eye. In addition to making things darker, this increases the depth of field.  As a result, the "too near" focus of your eyes might extend to make previously out of focus things focus.

The extreme of this effect is a pinhole camera.  This is a camera with no lens but a hole so small that even without the lens light can be focused.


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

[User]
Why don't the roof of our mouths scar, but skin does?

I can't think of any reasonable answer. Does scar tissue grow faster than skin cells? If not then what is the point of scar tissue in the first place?

I've been getting gum grafts and can have the same area cut off apparently without long term issues?

I guess I'm wondering why two different areas on the same body, both with a decent risk of infection, have different instructions on how to heal?

[Assistant]
Scars are caused by a buildup of fibrous tissue (i.e. collagen), the same material in the normal skin, but arranged differently as a result of the healing process.

The hard part of the roof of your mouth (hard palate) is different, it doesn't have the same makeup. The surface there is a thin mucous membrane, which, among other things, means it heals differently, and doesn't have the same collagen makeup, meaning it won't scar (as easily).


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

[User]
[The Walking Dead] Are human bites just as dangerous as walker bites? + How did nobody notice that it wasn't just the bite that turned the victim into a walker?

Since walker bites are apparently not the reason people come back as walkers, would that mean that if a regular human bit you, you'd be just as fucked as if a walker bit you? For example: When Rick kills Joe by ripping his throat out with his teeth. Even if Joe survived the bite, I assume he'd succumb to the same symptoms that he would if he had been bitten by a walker, right?

On a side note. How did nobody notice that it wasn't the bites that were causing people to turn into walkers? What, did not a single person die of a heart attack during the initial outbreak? Did police just not notice that when they shot looters (I'm assuming they did),  they came back as walkers, despite never being bitten? Did doctors never even think to try their best antibiotics on bite victims? Human bites are pretty nasty, but you're not instantly doomed, and I'm sure that the US had a functioning healthcare service during the initial outbreak.

[Assistant]
I'd assume that walker bites are lethal mostly because of all the diseases that they carry, not because of the zombie virus itself. If you got bitten by a person who never brushed their teeth and had massively decaying material on their teeth, there's a possibility that you'd succumb to the same symptoms that getting bitten from a walker would give you.

It all basically depends on how badly the wound gets infected by the bite. From a walker, the wound immediately gets massively infected, whereas a human bite is much less likely to be infectious and immediately lethal. As a side note, this is probably the same reason why people react to walker bites in very different ways. Dale got bitten and lived for a pretty substantial amount of time afterwards, while other people get bitten and turn pretty much instantly. It's all about how virulent the diseases on the teeth actually are.


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

[User]
Is the perception of sound relative to size?

I was sitting at home watching an ant crawl across my floor.  I happened to be tapping my foot at the time and wondered if that sound, which to me is a basic tap, sounded like a huge boom to this ant.  So I'm trying to figure out if sound, or rather how we perceive it, is a matter proportional to size.  One example would be the ant.  But what if you were to somehow come across a giant...would his footsteps sound the same to you as yours do to a tiny insect.  I am, of course, assuming that tiny insects hear the same way we do, but you get the idea.

[Assistant]
Perception is the trasduction of physical phenomena into an information processor.

When entities perceive, be they animal or plant, their "perception" is not based on size, but on the organization of their processing.

you can't "assume" that ants hear the same way that we do, because that implies that ants have the same brain, or something similar.

I think i went off on a tangent, but

tl;dr: comparing the perception of a stimulus between entities depends solely on how that stimulus is perceived, and not on anything physical.


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

[User] ELI5: If a dog's hearing is better than a humans, why don't dogs seem uncomfortable when the TV volume is loud?

[Assistant]
You're working from the presumption that "better" hearing means they perceive volume to be magnified, however this is not the case.

Think about humans with differing eyesight. If one person has better eyesight than another, they might be able to see objects off in the distance more clearly, however that doesn't mean that nearby objects appear magnified or that everything seems brighter to them. They're simply able to see more thing in fine detail.

Similarly, dogs are able to pick up more sounds than we can -- they can hear frequencies that we cannot, and they are more sensitive to quiet and subtle noises that we may not notice. This doesn't mean that everything seems *louder* to them, however, only that they are able to hear more than we can.


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

[User] [Hannibal TV show] Why does Baltimore has such high rate of serial killers?

[Assistant]
Baltimore has exactly as many serial killers in the world of *Hannibal* as it does in the real world. The only difference is that the presence of Will Graham - and, to a lesser extent, Jack Crawford and his unit - means that far more of them are identified and far more of them are caught.

In a world such as ours - a world without such brilliant minds - these creatures are free to kill and kill and kill (and occasionally to leave alive, but covered in fungus, or with half your brain replaced with bees).


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

[User] If the majority of people are right handed, why do some of the earlier languages such as Arabic and Hebrew write from right to left?

[Assistant] The "decision" to write from right to left vs. left to right was really only made a few times, since most of the writing systems today descend from only a handful of ancient ones. It's not like every few years these cultures re-evaluate which direction to write. So how were these decisions originally made? Writing was first done not with ink or pigment, but by etching or pressing into clay, stone, etc. So the advantage to choosing one direction over the other wasn't present. The decision was most likely made rather arbitrarily.


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

[User] [Comics] I've spent the last 10 years working myself up from a Hench to a actual villain. I'm a bit flush with cash(about $90,000 USD) but I'm essentially street level. What can I do to increase my net worth while keeping up the villainy? I want to be a big bad some day.

[Assistant] Hire a criminal P.I. who has the necessary connections and doesn't mind getting a little dirty. Make sure its someone you trust and have a past with; if you don't have someone like that, then set him up in such a way that no other crime boss will hire him. Do this so you know you can trust that he wont back stab you. Hire him to look for a couple powerful mutants or mutate and those they care about. Once found, confront them and tell them you wish to hire them as body guards, tell them you know about their loved ones and make it sound like a threat. Then tell them that if they do as their told, you will insure their loved ones protection and care for them. Once you have all this done, hire the P.I. (along with one of the mutants) to look into everything about your competition and their source of product. Then take out the lower level competition by various means and give them a choice of working for you or death. Grow your business slowly and secretly. Then once at a comfortable stage in your empire, go after the bigger competition by blackmailing, threats against those they are about, all out war (not recommend but effective), or framing them for something that will insure there source of product will no longer want to do business with them (like working with the Feds or good guys).


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

[User] How many bytes of information can a single neuron store?

[Assistant]
There are a lot of different ways to answer this question. One answer could be that single neurons cannot store any information, that information storage is based on the state of a group of neurons in a system. In that context, we could say that a single neuron in a group of neurons is acting as a container for a single bit - each neuron is an on/off switch, but thinking of neurons as digital (0/1) is problematic because it makes the assumption that the state of a neuron is binary.

This is where the concept of an action potential becomes important. So each neuron in this memory system we are talking about has a non-binary amount of electrical energy stored in its membrane, and when the membrane reaches a certain threshold potential, this triggers a chain reaction that sends an action potential along an axon. This action potential might carry some encoded information along to another neuron, and trigger another action potential, so on and so forth, until many neurons have been triggered by this initial reaction.

I know this isnt exactly a cut and dry, Neurons store 10 bytes of data answer that you might have been looking for, but at least these are some ideas to think about in regards to how its really a more difficult/complex question to ask than it might seem.


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

[User]
[GAME OF THRONES] who ruled over The Westerlands whilst Tywin served as hand of the king?

The show says he served for 20 years as hand so who ruled The Westerlands in his stead? Was it Kevan? And if so, who took over when Kevan became hand?

[Assistant] In title, it was still Tywin Lannister though he probably relegated the day-to-day operations to his brother, Kevan (much in the same way Tyrion operate as Hand in Tywin's stead). When Tywin died the title *Warden of the West* was bestowed upon Daven Lannister and Cersei Lannister became *Lady of Casterly Rock* and head of the Lannister family.


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

[User]
[Batman] What is Batman's plans for if and when he dies?

Bruce isn't going to live forever. He is getting older and disease or an accident can happen to anyone and in his line of work one mistake can kill him. For a person who is always prepared for any scenario, what is his plans for his eventual death? Does he have contingencies for his friends in the Justice League? His Bat family? His gallery of enemies and rogues? Would he remove for good enemies like the Joker if he knew he was terminally ill and only had a few months to live?

(I realize that the Dark Knight trilogy hints that Batman would "retire" and hope that John Blake would pick up where he left off, but the Batman of the various comics is a lot more meticulous than that, hence the question)

[Assistant]
I would imagine, basically, the bat family.

He could easily leave most of the robins (who are effectively, if not legally, his children) his money and mansion, and with their training and access to his equipment, they'd be able to take up more or less where he left off, continuing his war on crime from beyond the grave.

I doubt there's much more then that. He has already planned the next generation of batmen.