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

[User] ELI5: How do childhood memories cause trauma if you can't remember them?

[Assistant]
Do you remember the first time you spoke the word "candy"?

I bet you don't.

But you remember that you liked candy when you were a child, don't you? Even though you don't have the first memory, you still have a sensation about the word.

We don't remember every thing that happens to us when we're a small child. But some events do cause us to form impressions that are good or bad about certain things.

We might lose the memory over time, but we don't lose the impression that it caused. So it might result in, say, a fear of dogs if we were bitten by a dog, even if we don't remember it. Or it might make us nervous to be around someone older that's friendly, because (sorry, this will be sad) someone older that was friendly abused us when we were a small child.

Not all of impressions might have been accurate. But they were enough to create a reaction that could last many years, from something as trivial as not liking a certain type of food, to something as severe as crippling anxiety about certain situations.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do scientists look for water or organic compounds when looking for extraterrestrial life forms? Wouldn't it be possible that ET life could arise in completely unimaginable circumstances?

I understand that life on earth is composed mainly of organic compounds, and that life is teeming in water, which is itself a large part of all of us.

BUT, that's what we know about life on earth. Who can say that life outside of earth has to conform to the same rules that apply on earth? Why can't intelligent beings arise from inorganic compounds, or compounds that we don't know exist?

Wouldn't this type of search be too narrow-minded?

[Assistant] The problem with that is that, by definition, we don't know what unimaginable life would look like, so we wouldn't know how to find it.  We do know what at least some examples of carbon based life are so we spend our time looking for things like that because that's our only option.


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

[User] If a spider builds its web in a bad spot, will it be smart enough to give up after a day or two and move elsewhere, or will it just starve to death because it can't realize it made a bad decision?

[Assistant] Orb Weaver spiders, the most common group of spiders that build spiral wheel-shaped webs, generally build a new web each day. They'll eat the old web in the evening, rest for an hour or so, and then spin a new web.


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

[User]
Why doesn't Jupiter form a star?

If it is so big and gaseous, why doesn't the gravity collapse it and ignite a new star? Is it not big enough, or does it's spin's centripetal force keep the gas from collapsing?

[Assistant]
It's nothing to do with the spin, it simply doesn't have enough mass to sustain fusion. Objects don't just spontaneously collapse for no reason; the pressure of the material has to be overcome. Jupiter is actually slowly contracting due to gravity, but this can't ever lead to it being a star because its mass isn't great enough to create the kind of extreme temperature and pressure in the center which is necessary to sustain fusion.

It would need ~80 times more mass to be able to sustain proton-proton chain fusion.


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

[User]
[Superheroes] Are there ways to make a cape or cloak functional and not just for show?

Some superhumans are so powerful that they just wear it for show or honor while others wear it for a status symbol of royalty. Aside from Batman's glider cape, what other ways can a cape or a cloak be useful? Like practical uses that can help heroes on missions?

[Assistant]
Besides the other comments for Batman's cape, he has also used it to obscure his body, hide his center mass when people are shooting at him.

There are also heroes where it is part of their powers.  Cloak of Cloak & Dagger is one example, Spawn is another.


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

[User]
ELI5: why do acne spots enlarge after being popped?

Once theyre popped and the juices inside are released shouldnt it be smaller?

[Assistant] It leads to a temporary increase in inflammation just due to the damage to your skin popping open the pocket of pus does. That combined with the fact that it was an infected pore leads to an increased immune response via inflammation (minor swelling and increase in redness/blood flow to the area to heal it more quickly)


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

[User]
ELI5: How did Brachiosaurus' find enough Vegetation to eat, and how were plants enough for this huge animal?

**Title**

[Assistant] They dont have to chase their food and theres a lot of it so they spend their entire day eating. Its just like how cows produce insane amounts of meat from mostly grass or hay. Because they eat constantly.


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

[User] ELI5: How do aquatic mammals eat food without flooding their stomach with salt water?

[Assistant] They intake the food, and then blow outwards, spitting the water out of their mouth while keeping the food trapped inside (Humans can do this too. Put something in your mouth, for instance a small bit of carrot, then pour in some water. You can spit the water out through your teeth) The food is then swallowed whole. Excess salt left in the mouth and in the food naturally comes out mainly in their urine, which is about 8 times as salty as land mammal urine. Their blood is about the same in terms of salt content as land mammals.


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

[User] ELI5: How do computers choose "random" numbers?

[Assistant] You start with a sort-of-random number. Often something like "the number of milliseconds since January 1st 1970" is close enough to random to count, but if you want to be really random, you base it off of something like whatever random noise the computer's microphone picks up or the airflow readings around the hard drive. Then you put that number through some super messy and complicated math formula to get an even more random number. Then you can feed that number back into the same calculation to get another number. These numbers aren't truly random, but it's close enough for almost all purposes.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is lead so much more poisonous than other metals?

I've been using an aluminum rake for my yard and a lot of the aluminum dust comes off on my hands. Why is this not considered highly toxic if the aluminum dust can easily get into my lungs? Same with other metals.

[Assistant]
Lead is not really the most toxic metal.

Keep in mind that arsenic and mercury are metals too.

What makes lead so special is that it sits in a sweet spot between stuff that is really bad for you (most heavy metals are) and which exist in large quantities and has useful properties.

You won't built tools or stuff like water pipes out of arsenic, but lead is a good candidate for that.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why can't we just have the plants absorb the excess CO2 in the atmosphere.

I know that certain indoor agricultural processes utilise co2 for significantly increase yields? Do plants in the wild then not use extra CO2?

Edit. If the current balance of plant , animal life and emissions is in disequilibrium is there a certain amount of extra plant matter which would correct the problem?

Edit. Could we plant our way out of the problem?  What species of plant would be most suitabe? I've heard that hemp grows quite vigorously producing a woody tree in one season and the fibres produce fabric more durable than cotton .

[Assistant]
Prior to burning fossil fules, we had a balance of CO2 producers (mammal life breathing oxygen and exhaling CO2) and oxygen producers (plant life).

We're damaging the oceans and clearing forests while burning fossil fuels, which releases tons of extra CO2 with less plant life to convert it.

It's not like there's a place were we can just plant our way out of it at that scale.  We'd need a continent worth of trees.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do you hear music on a lower key when you yawn especially with earbuds?

[Assistant]
So, this is kind of a fun one.  I'll try and keep it as ELI5 as possible.

When you hear, sounds go into your ear canal and make your eardrum wobble, then that makes some bones wobble, which then pass the sound on to something called your cochlea.  The cochlea is full of fluid, and has a stretched sheet called the basilar membrane which wobbles when sounds go across it.  Because of physics, different parts of this wobble for different pitches of sound.  When a bit of the membrane wobbles, a signal gets sent to your brain, and that's how you know what pitch you heard.

When we yawn, a few things happen.  One thing is that the series of bones in the ear sort of lock up.  This means they don't pass on sound as well as the normally would, so things get quieter.  But this has a more dramatic effect of the higher pitches, meaning the lower ones slip through and the music has a deeper feel to it.  It's not that it's a lower pitch as such.  More like someone has cranked up the bass on an equaliser.

But something else can happen too.  The yawn can actually change the pressure in your ear, specifically in the cochlea.  This can alter the physics that make different parts of the cochlea response to different pitches.  Effectively, it means the brain hears a slightly shifted note from the one that is reaching the ear.  So this can mean all the sounds temporarily shift slightly, until you finish yawning.


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

[User]
What did Aristotle mean when he said women's capacity to reason "lacks authority" (Politics 1.13)?

I'm still puzzling over this text. What does it mean?

[Assistant] The mention is very brief and his exact meaning is unclear, but it is typically interpreted in two ways:  1) Their rational capacity lacks authority over the non-rational part of their soul, i.e. women are naturally emotional; or 2) their rational capacity lacks the authority to command other people the way the male head of the household does, i.e. women are naturally obedient.


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

[User] ELI5: what is the difference between fresh and frozen food from a chemistry perspective?

[Assistant]
First thing is if you freeze food improperly, water will freeze inside the cells in such a way that crystals of ice will form, piercing through the cell walls and degrading the quality of the food.

Second: a lot of processes require certain molecules to be dissolved in liquid water. When you prevent that from happening, those processes stop. For example, when fruits ripe, the cell walls start disolving in liquid water (e.g. pectin from the walls gets degraded by the enzyme polygalacturonase and becomes soluble).

For most chemical reactions, the rate of reactions increases as the temperature increases. If you lower temperatures, most processes will start having negligible reaction rates, that's why your fridge preserves your food (by slowing down everything, including bacterial growth).

If you freeze, anything that relies on liquid water is basically put to a stop. Imagine being in a pool and trying to reach the other side of the pool, and then all the water around you freezes and you basically can't move anymore, you just have to sit there and wait. Same thing happens to molecules dissolved in the food's water.

tl;dr liquid water allows molecules to interact and come in contact. Freezing water removes that possibility.


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

[User] ELI5: Two of my cats are mother and child. They are both adults and interact with each other in the same way that my other cats do. Are they still aware of their maternal bond?

[Assistant]
In short - we can't know for sure. We can extrapolate animals' knowledge or awareness of kinship bonds by things like preferential 'kin selection' but it seems like this is easier to ascertain in more strictly social animals.

As for the whole inbreeding thing - if these were wild cats a young male would disperse and *that's* how incest could be averted.


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

[User]
[Pokmon] How are Slowpoke Tails harvested?

As I have recently set off on my travels, I have been hearing about "Slowpoke Tail"; apparently it is a delicacy found in the various regions and I'm told it is quite nutritious as well, but I can't seem to get the picture of all those poor tail-less Slowpoke wandering around. How does one go about harvesting a Slowpoke tail? Does it grow back? What effect does it have on the Slowpoke? Is the nutritional value worth the consumption/impact on the species?

[Assistant] Slowpoke cannot live without their tails, as they are their only method of fishing for food. The tails are numb, so removal of the tail doesn't cause the Slowpoke any pain, but it will not know that the tail is gone and so will sit by the water thinking it is fishing until it starves.


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

[User]
[Marvel] What is the difference between the Phoenix Force and Galactus in terms of their roles as cosmic entities ?

Arent they both destroyers? It seems kind of redundant considering their respective power levels? Would love to hear your thoughts.

[Assistant]
They've actually talked about this with each other.

The Phoenix creates life but burns up stars, so that the lifespan of the universe ultimately winds down; Galactus destroys planets but it will ultimately be used to start a new universe.

It's the difference between someone who gives you something at a cost to be paid later, and someone who takes from you now with the promise of paying you back in full later on.


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

[User]
ELI5: What does the world look like to an animal whose eyes are on the sides of their head? Not forgetting to mention their near 360 degree field of view!

Whoa! My first 'successful' Reddit post. Thank you all for your responses, I've read through them and learnt a great deal :) Knowledge lights up the world!

[Assistant] Keep in mind your two eyes see almost the same image, but your brain stitches the images into one image.  Eyes on the sides of the head see two different images, yet the brain creates a panoramic view, at the cost of depth-perception.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does the screen of a calculator turn a blue colour when you press in on it?

[Assistant]
You must be talking about a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD).

If that is the case, then the actual crystals that bend the light are essentially liquid, so if you press down, you deform them, and they half-turn, and begin reflecting random bits of light.


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

[User] ELI5: If vomiting gets rid of potentially poisonous food, then why do so many animals eat their vomit?

[Assistant]
Canids (dogs, wolves, coyotes, and their other wild relatives) gulp large pieces of unchewed and/or boney food. After letting it soften for a bit, they bring it back up in private where they can sort out the bone and chew the meat without dealing with their packmates. They don't consume their vomit if they're puking because they're feeling sick.
TL;DR: They only eat the good stuff.


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

[User]
[Disney Atlantis] Question about the ending.

Just rewatched this movie the other day and I had a question about the ending.  At the climax of the film, Kida merged with the Crystal Power Source to save the City from the volcano. She was subsequently returned after the City was safe.  However, in the beginning of the film, her mother was absorbed to save the City from the flood and was never returned.

Why did Kida come back and not her mother?  Why was she not permanently absorbed into the power source?

[Assistant] Her mother spent spent longer within it. When Atlantis the continent was inundated, Atlantis the city was below sea level, and the crystal heart had to protect the city from tons of seawater more or less indefinitely by sinking it into an underground air pocket. The lava flow lasted only a few minutes, so Kida could still be unfused afterward.


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

[User]
ELI5: How can there be a infinite number of prime numbers? Shouldn't you eventually completely run out?

Eventually the numbers get so big that there just HAS to be a number you can divide it with. Right?

EDIT: Thanks for the answer!!!

[Assistant]
Nope. And this is actually a fact that is quite easy to prove in an ELI5 way!

Let's say you were right, and you had a list of all the prime numbers. Let's call them p_1, p_2, p_3... all the way to p_n. Maybe n is very large (maybe there's 57296572365782365863 primes), but it's still a finite number. Our goal is to show that if you're right, we get a contradiction, and so you must be wrong.

Take this list of primes, all the primes you say exist, and multiply them together to form a very big number. Let's call that number m, that is, m = (p_1)\*(p_2)\*(p_3)...\*(p_n). Presumably this is a very very large number, but that's fine. Now, add one to *m*. So we have all the primes multiplied together and added one.

Now, *m+1* is clearly bigger than anything in our list (by a long shot), and we said that was all the primes that exist. So *m+1* is not prime, since we assumed we had a list of *all* of the primes, leaving nothing out. It must, therefore, have a prime factor somewhere in the list we gave.

But since p_1 is clearly a factor of m (since we built m by multiplying a bunch of numbers that included p_1), it cannot be a factor of m+1, since (m+1) divided by p_1 would give us a remainder of 1. The same is true for p_2, for p_3, for p_4, and so on. This is a contradiction: we said it must have a factor in the list (since all numbers would have to, if the list contained all primes), but we also showed it can't have one.

EDIT: As a side note, the reason that we can't perform this same process with infinitely many primes is the multiplication step: multiplying an *infinite* number of primes won't work.


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

[User]
Why there is liquid water under ice sheets?

Why there is liquid water under ice sheets? , like in a lake or Antarctica, isn't it below its freezing point?. I was thinking it may be for the supercooling process, but it is in contact with ice, so I don't know .

[Assistant]
It happens for the same reason that ice floats on water.

With most substances density goes down as temperature increases. Liquid water is densest at 3 centigrade. So the bottom of a frozen pond will contain water about 2-3 degrees.

Warmer water goes down and stays liquid, colder water goes up and freezes.


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

[User] [Star Wars] How did Luke know that Vader needed his mask to live, and how did he know how to take it off?

[Assistant] Obi Wan had told him that Vader was more machine than man, so knowing that and by listening to the laboured, robotic-toned breathing of Vader its not a great leap in thought process to grasp the nature of the mask.


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

[User]
Why does physical gold sometimes appear dull? Is gold's lustre affected by its purity?

Why does physical gold (e.g. jewellery, gold bars) sometimes appear dull?

 Is gold's lustre affected by its purity?

[Assistant]
More likely, it was finished (ground, sanded, polished) differently either on purpose or as a side effect of manufacture (some bullion is just left how it cools in the mold, other bars are hit with torches to melt the surface and get it to re-puddle glassy smooth on the side that was down in the original casting, etc. etc).

That said, sure, different non-gold alloying metals (silver vs copper vs rhodium etc.) can affect how readily a lower-karat gold polishes, *I guess*, but you're probably seeing a variety of finishes/surface textures independent of the gold content, from what little you gave us to go on?


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

[User]
If brains are so much more advanced than any other computer on known to man, why can even the cheapest calculators do math so much better than us?

Our brains **are** more advanced than any other computer know to man, but why can even the cheapest calculators solve math equations faster and more accurate than us?

How are calculators designed to do math in a way that we are not?

[Assistant]
We designed computers to aid us in what we're not good at, and we built them in the easiest way to do it.

Think of other examples of using machines in ways they were not designed for. Will you be able to reach a very high speed with a big truck? Will you be able to carry a lot of weight with a motorbike?

Specifically, the human brain is a very good empirical function approximator: it can learn a numerical function from its inputs and produce appropriate outputs.

Think of this example: you're standing on a rock, take a jump like a meter forward into another rock that's slightly higher. As you put your foot on the higher stone, your leg pushes backwards and upwards at the same time, in a diagonal, so that the resulting force raises your body while slowing it down. You convert all your kinetic energy into gravitational potential energy, coming at a full stop at the highest point while maintaining balance.

Can you do the math with all the forces involved? Can you calculate the required tension of each individual muscle? Can you calculate how the muscle tension varies over time? Most importantly: can you adapt your calculations to slight errors *in real time*?

Don't expect a cheap calculator to do it, but the human brain is extremely good at it: you just do it without thinking much and it comes out just fine. That's because you've taken lots of jumps and lots of steps throughout your life, so the neural network in your brain has learnt that a given input from your internal ear (balance/acceleration/gravity sensor) is associated to a particular muscle tone.

The answer is that our brains do math based on symbols that we visualize (either written or thinking about them), and that's built on top of a very different native way of thinking. Calculators and computers perform math natively (by hardware), but emulating neural networks is extremely slow because this kind of hardware doesn't have enough parallelism. So we're just good at different things.


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

[User] Why was/is it necessary for sperm to exist outside the body (i.e. inside testicles) from an evolutionary standpoint?  Why didn't sperm instead evolve to adapt to the temperatures inside the body?

[Assistant] That's just the way it went. The proteins used in sperm production operate most efficiently at that slightly lower temperature, and also at a constant temperature. So when some animal way back when evolved a little climate controlled zone for the sperm factories, they made more quality sperm. More quality sperm=more quality offspring. This trait then got passed along, and so on and so forth. Has to do with biochemical function, pretty much.


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

[User] Is there a legitimate answer as to why I was born a human rather than an insect even though their numbers are in the quintillions at any given moment and ours are only in the billions ( roughly a billion to one odds)?

[Assistant]
This is one of those questions which, despite being expressed in a grammatically well-formed sentence, doesn't make any sense and doesn't mean anything. You only think you have a question here, and the "right" response is not the one which supplies an answer (since you can't give a "correct" answer to nonsense) but the one which helps you see that you haven't actually formed a though with this question.

You are an embodied human being. There is no such thing as *you* being born in a different body, nor any coherent idea of your consciousness being attached to some other being. Anything born as an insect would not have been you. Asking *why* you weren't born as something else is like asking why 1 wasn't 2.


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

[User]
[Fallout 3] Why does the Capitol Wasteland has almost no manufacturing capabilities?

It seems like everyone just salvages stuff. Even basic manufacturing equipment like foundries and forges are only found in The Pitt. I'm more surprised that the Enclave and Brotherhood lack any sort of production equipment. Do they also just salvage everything?

[Assistant] Because it has little in the way of trade resources and a population of only a few hundred. Virtually everyone living in the Capitol Wasteland is primarily focused on subsistence. Likely this has changed in the aftermath of the purifier being activated and the Brotherhood establishing a state there.


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

[User] [Warhammer 40k] If Warp entities are created and fueled by belief/emotion, does that mean that human religious entities (God, Allah, Buddha, Jesus, as well Hindu, Greek and Norse gods etc.) would exist somewhere in the Warp? If so how powerful could they be?

[Assistant]
None-extant.
Just having people belief and feel something is not really enough for the Warp, you need quantity.
And there quite simply are not that many humans around when those gods were worshiped. By the time human population become quite big (numbering in the billions), most worship was gone, and even then it probably would not produce anything more than a tiny spirit in the warp.

A third thing that one need to account is how close a species is to the warp. Eldar and Orks are close to the warp (in different ways) but humans was really not close to the warp until the later stages of the Dark age of Technology.

Look to the Tau, why is there not a "God" of the Greater Good? Because the Tau does not even blip on the warp.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why did 'SOLAR FREAKING ROADWAYS' never come into fruition?

For something that seemed to make so much sense/generate a lot of hype, why has the idea died off?

[Assistant]
The people making it can't even figure out how to get a roughly 15 foot area of sidewalk panels to light up, let alone produce energy, and that's after several million dollars, and YEARS of work.

The entire designed is flawed, as they are too fragile, would never be able to reach 100 capacity (solar panels need to be angled towards the sun, road needs to be flat).

Plus, glass is a HORRIBLE road surface. Aside from the fragility issue, the second it rains, you'd might as well be driving on ice it's be so slippery.

Oh, and it's also completely cost ineffective.


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

[User] [Men In Black] How did humans survive previous alien invasion when we didn't have technology (pre-20th century) and why do aliens just now abide by Earth's/MIB's laws?

[Assistant]
Earth is a galactic backwater. Until the 1950s when the first group of refugees showed up there weren't any aliens bothering to come to Earth.

The reason that the first group showed up was that they were looking for a backwater planet to use as a galactic Casablanca. So prior to the 1950s alien invasions weren't an issue since Earth had nothing of value and was to far out in the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm to bother visiting.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does my banana ripen at superspeed when it's in my backpack?

[Assistant] Bananas are a fruit that if it's surrounded by the chemicals it emits, will ripen much faster (you can turn green bananas to yellow quickly if you wrap them in a plastic bag).  In an open area, these chemicals spread out and the fruit ripens at a more 'normal' rate.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do the soccer players walk out to the pitch holding hands with children?

[Assistant]
FIFA and UNICEF are partners. They work together to spread awareness of children being drafted as soldiers. They also do it as a charity thing sometimes also. They also walk out with children from the you get teams. AC Milan and Barcelona and many teams have youth programs and children from the team are sent out with the professionals.

Tldr: many reasons, UNICEF awareness of child soldiers and charity for kids to meet pros are just two.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is sillicone used in electronics over organic semiconductors?

[Assistant] It took me a second there because silicone is used in electronics to hold components in place against vibrations. However you do not make semiconductors out of silicone but rather silicon. A completely different thing. Perhaps the biggest issue with organic semiconductors is that we can not produce them small enough. Not only is the manufacturing of these semiconductors not reliable enough due to the randomness of the materials but the molecules themselves are rather big compared to accuracy of the high end silicon foundries. This means that you are stuck with the transistor denisty you had 10-20 years ago and it is much harder to progress from there. This does not matter that much in LEDs and even power transistors because in these applications you have one big semiconductor rather then billions of small ones.


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

[User]
CMV: All the US flag apparel people wear and use around July 4th disrespects the flag itself

Background:
-US Federal Law Code says the flag isnt to be used for clothing. The code isnt enforceable because of the 1st amendment.
-American Legion says its okay to have the flag resembled on clothing.

The flag is something to be honored and respected. Its colors and design is not something you should use to cloth yourself. Its not patriotic.

Socks? Youre feet are on the ground, get dirty, and smell.

Underwear/Swimsuits? Youre putting the flags colors and design next to your netherlands.

Shirts? Your pits stink.

Pants? You sit on them.

Paper napkins/plates? You eat off that, wipe your face with it, and throw it away.

This isnt even taking into consideration all of this patriotism is really just commercialization of the flag and drives revenue.

Why not just let the flag fly the way its supposed to? (you know like a FLAG)

[Assistant]
> Background: -US Federal Law Code says the flag isnt to be used for clothing

The code is that you don't take an **actual US flag** and cut it up to make a shirt, not that a shirt can't have stars and stripes imagery like the flag's design.


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

[User]
[40k] Do space marines keep their rank after they're put in dreadnoughts?

Could a captain or chapter master lead his marines as a dreadnought?

[Assistant]
Part of the trouble with Dreadnoughts is that their entire existence becomes agony. Whatever is left of their shattered body is jammed into a cramped metal box, and all of its sensor and control systems are forced into their nervous system. Every second of consciousness is filled with pain and anger. This can, of course, be somewhat dealt with through the red-hot crucible of glorious combat, but it also explains the fact that when there isn't a battle for them to take part in, they are put into a sort of stasis. It is difficult for someone in stasis to maintain a Legion.

Plus, once they are interred in their Dreadnought they are effectively immortal as long as the life-support systems function; Bjorn the Fell-handed fought alongside the Loyalists during the Horus Heresy, meaning this guy is 10,000 years old. And even though he's that old, chances are he has spent a vast majority of it in cold-storage.

Bjorn is a good example of what you are asking, because he used to be the Chapter Master of the Space Wolves. Clearly, he is no longer the Chapter Master, but to call him anything less than one of the most revered and respected leaders and warriors in the Imperium's history is tantamount to heresy.

I think the answer to your question is "kind of". Such is the reverence for these soldiers that they are almost placed outside of "rank". They'll still take orders from those "above" them, but few would ignore a Dreadnought's command. It is understood that they are the cream of the crop. These guys were so badass that when their bodies became broken and useless it was deemed more costly to simply let them die. Few are unable to recognize the significance of this, and as such, they are treated as being akin to their commanders.

**Tl;Dr = They don't keep their rank, but they don't really need to because nobody is particularly willing to question them. They are seen as paragons of what is is to be Astartes, and so are afforded the reverence and respect of true commanders.**


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

[User]
[General] What relatively humanoid character is likely to have the worst halitosis?

What fictional character that is not an outright monster, a character that is at least somewhat humanoid in body shape is either known for, or you suspect has one of the worst cases of bad breath (halitosis)?

[Assistant]
Im guessing Golem from Lord of the Rings could probably use a tic tac.

Something also tells me that Klingons of Star Trek take pride in how bad and offensive their breath smells. They probably wear it as a badge of honor.


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

[User] [Marvel] How did Captain America reacted to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Vietnam War and other U.S atrocities?

[Assistant]
I can tell you he got so disgusted with the Nixon administration that he renounced his Captain America identity and became Nomad.

But in this universe Nixon was a cackling supervillain who led the terrorist group called the Secret Empire, bent on taking over the United States (it's anyone's guess why *the president of the United States* thought it was necessary to conquer a country he already ran)


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

[User]
ELI5: How close to 50/50 are genes from our parents? Is it possible to have more genes from one parent than the other?

Given genetic testing, if I have my genetic break down and one parents break down as well is it really as simple as halving the first parents break down and assuming the rest comes from the other parent or is it much more complex than that?

[Assistant] If you are male, you definitely have more genes from your mother than from your father. This is because male children inherit a Y chromosome from their father, and the Y chromosome is much smaller and has fewer genes on it than the X chromosome that all children inherit from their mother. So barring odd chromosomal mutations, male children always have more genes from their mother than their father.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do I sometimes sweat more when I'm nervous than I do when I exercise?

I am a physically fit male and I drink a lot of water. And yet even during intense workouts I seem to sweat a lot less than when I get nervous. More specifically, when I am forced to speak in front of an audience of some kind.

[Assistant]
When you work out you sweat because your body is heating up, and one way to remove heat from the body is through evaporation of sweat from the surface of our skin.
Now when you are nervous your body shifts into into a "mode" that we call "Fight or Flight." In this mode several things happen: chemicals are released into the body that cause us to get ready for fighting or getting away (hence fight or flight). These chemicals cause blood vessels near the skin to get wider and vessels near your intestines and kidneys to get narrower. This causes more blood to go closer to the skin where heat can be transferred to the surface to the skin and then away from the body (so you don't get too hot), this is why you get a bit flushed as well.
These chemicals also cause your heart to speed up, your breathing to speed up, making your eyes dilate, and make you anxious and want to move around. Sweating is also part of this response, it helps the body in the same way as before but in this case it is a preemptive measure.

Many things trigger this fight of flight response: heights, large animals, something that scares you, or anything that makes your nervous.


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

[User] Do blind people's pupils become dilated in the dark?

[Assistant]
There is an afferent (going to) and an efferent (coming from) limb, in cranial nerves 3 and 4,respectively. So light comes in, sends a signal down the occulomotor nerve (CN3), then the signal gets sent down the trochlear nerve (CN4) to the iris. This stimulates the iris sphincter to contract and serves to constrict the pupil.

The thing to know about this is that it's a carefully choreographed system, with each part being necessary for the other parts to respond appropriately. So if your retina is shot, your brain won't get the appropriate afferent signal and thus you won't get the constriction. If there is a reason for the blindness somewhere else in the body (brain, perhaps in the visual cortex), the necessary pathways may not be disrupted, resulting in maintenance of the dilation or constriction response of the pupil.


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

[User] [Star Wars] In ROTJ, when the group gets caught in the Ewok's net, Luke asks Han if he can reach Luke's lightsaber. Why didn't he just use the Force?

[Assistant]
Luke wasn't in a position to clear his mind easily: it was just more practical to ask Han at the time.

Now, if Han couldn't reach it and they're hanging there for more than a few minutes, Luke surely would have used Force telekinesis. It's just a bit harder when dangling in a net with a Wookiee breathing down your neck.


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

[User] Take a breath and hold it in. At what rate is the oxygen taken into the blood? Is this a linear function? -- will all the oxygen eventually be removed? [Fifth time posting this question, first time in plain english]

[Assistant] It is not a linear function. As the oxygen concentration decreases, the driving force responsible for oxygen transport into the blood also decreases. The driving force dependence on concentration results in nonlinear behavior.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does HD Video of HD Pictures appear more detailed and clearer than if I was to view it in person?

So I was watching an HD video of the Grand Canyon and I was struck by how it seemed more realistic than if I was to see it in person. I have 20/20 vision so there wouldn't be an issue there. Any theories/answers would be awesome!

[Assistant]
Few reasons:

1. Colors are likely enhanced from the camera making things sharper than is actually natural.
2. Especially when dealing with places like the Grand Canyon, you deal with a lot of glare off surfaces and your eyes have trouble taking in the bright light without squinting.  Once the picture is developed/edited, you don't deal with this any more.
3. Zoom.  Your eyes have no zoom, the vast majority of nature pictures have at least some zoom applied meaning there's details in the pictures your eyes couldn't pick out.


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

[User]
ELI5: When you are playing a game, does turning off the screen or monitor of the device you are using lessen the memory the game uses?

Basically, during running any application/program, does the computer/phone still use the same amount of resources/memory when the screen/monitor is turned off just like the moment the monitor is still on to display the graphics?

Or is the memory consumption being reduced due to not having to display anything on the screen?

[Assistant] No. The frames are still being generated whether the screen is in or off. All that changes is the screen isnt listening when its off. Youll save some wattage by having the screen off, but playing locally will be taxing. If youre streaming to another device however, turn off the screen and do the environment a favour.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is disinfecting wounds painful?

[Assistant] There's two main reasons. First, the wound is sensitive, as that part of the body has been damaged and is screaming at your brain to start taking damage control steps.  Putting anything in an open wound is going to hurt some. Second,  the things we use to disinfect typically do that by killing biological material,  which will include the cells around and in your wound. So basically you're quarantining and nuking the area to make sure the infection doesn't spread.  The basic part of your brain that handles pain doesn't understand that, or the reasons for disinfection,  it just sees more damage to an already damaged part of the body,  and registers it as pain.


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

[User]
[Marvel 616] Let's say the LAPD has hired a telepath and the officer uses that power to read suspects minds, would any mental admission of guilt hold up in court? Would it be coercion?

The police are using telepaths to force admissions of guilt. Even if true, wouldn't this be considered a forced admission. You could even argue it was an illegal search. Where does the law stand on this?

Also, lets say someone commits a crime and their defense is they were forced telepathically. Is this a valid defense? Is their a way for law enforcement to prove whether someone was mentally interfered with or not?

[Assistant]
>*The Fifth Amendment (Amendment V) to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights and protects individuals from being* **compelled to be witnesses against themselves** *in criminal cases. "Pleading the Fifth" is a colloquial term for invoking the right that allows witnesses to decline to answer questions where the answers might incriminate them, and generally without having to suffer a penalty for asserting the right. Defendants cannot be compelled to become witnesses at their own trials.*

>Also, lets say someone commits a crime and their defense is they were forced telepathically. Is this a valid defense?

Yes, it's duress, but
>Is their a way for law enforcement to prove whether someone was mentally interfered with or not?

Generally, no.


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

[User]
[DC] "Why don't you just put the whole world in a bottle, Superman?"

Why doesn't Superman put the whole world in a bottle to protect it as he did with Kandor?

Why does Superman suffer a nervous breakdown when Lex Luthor asks him this question in *Red Son*?

Why does Luthor believe that this question is the most powerful weapon against the Man of Steel?

[Assistant]
Because the people of Kandor are helpless, dependent on Superman even to defend themselves against a rampaging insect. They are victims: Superman found them subject to the whims of an all-powerful ruler and has worked desperately to free them. Luthor's letter made him confront the fact that he had subjected all of humanity to his own whims - and that despite his good intentions and heroic efforts, he had been doing his best to reduce humanity to impotence and dependence.

In that moment, the moment of his final triumph, Superman realized that he was a monster who was shrinking humanity just as Brainiac had shrunk Kandor.


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

[User]
ELI5:what's the clear liquid in a blister? And is it safe to pop a blister?

*SOLVED* Is the clear liquid just water?
Thank you all for the replies :)

[Assistant] Its called serum. It comes from other tissues surrounding the injury and actually acts to protect the injured area. Popping the blister will remove this protection as well as create an opening to the injured area, where pathogens can get in and cause infection. So its best not to pop it, but there are some cases where it should be popped. Like if its in an area where you are sure to accidentally pop it anyway. Better to lance it and safely care for the wound at home than to pop a foot blister while you are hiking or something.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Shouldnt "Harry" be a much more common name, given how many people worshipped him until he was 11?

I mean, he should have met with like, hundreds of Harrys just a few yars younger than him.

[Assistant]
Well, just because they thought Voldemort died didn't mean ALL the Deatheaters were dead.

It was a lot safer now that he's gone, but calling your child Harry was still considered somewhat inviting trouble, to be used to set an easy example.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do so many people seem to fall for scam artists?

[Assistant]
A lot of scams prey on ignorance and familiarity

Think about the typical "You've won x amount of money" emails, you may not fall for them because you know that you've not entered the Spanish Lottery or used a casino site before, but someone who often does that sort of thing or has no knowledge of how scams work may not know that those emails aren't legitimate since they see real ones often.

Another common one is to pretend to be a large company e.g Microsoft offering tech-support, Walmart offering coupons, Delta offering free flights. Since a person is familiar with these companies it wouldn't be too hard to imagine such an offer being legitimate therefore they are happy to pass their details on. This is helped by the fact that almost everyone likes free things.


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

[User] [MCU] Say Dr. Erskine had lived to perfect the Super-Soldier process. Just how many super soldiers would the US have produced? How would they have been equipped and deployed both during and after the war?

[Assistant]
The entirety of the Howling Commandos would likely be made into Super-Soldiers.

The main question here is how much control does Erskine have over the serum?  If Erskine is in charge of the entire process there are maybe 100 super soldiers made, from men and women that Erskine hand picks who he knows will use their power responsibly.  If Erskine is removed from the process and the US Army gets to use it as they choose, there are likely thousands made.


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

[User]
[MCU] When Thor says he's 1500 years old, who's years is he talking about

Presumably not Earth's? Is there a standardised year measurement?

[Assistant]
Thor is translating everything to English, including our time measurements.

Yes, Thor son of Odin is over 1500 years old.

I highly recommend this Thor Odinson (Earth-14412) , to see exactly how old Thor will be in the future.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] How did the twins know the outcome of the Quidditch World Cup

In GoF, Fred and George bet their entire savings that Ireland would win, but Krum would catch the Snitch. It seems unlikely that they would risk so much on such a rare outcome unless they were certain it would happen. So how did they know?

[Assistant] They were incredibly intelligent guys. Krum's the best professional Seeker in the world so of course he'll catch the Snitch. However, if they analysed the overall teams they would find the Ireland would likely win a commanding lead. It's not as rare an outcome as you might think. Just not an obvious one.


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

[User]
CMV: The bill should always be split on the first date

Im a guy who goes on quite a few dates, mostly with girls met on Tinder or other dating apps. Like the practice of tipping, guys paying for the girl isnt inherently required but there are currently strong social norms pressuring for it. Up until now Ive been footing the bill on the first date, but Im recently becoming of the opinion that first dates should always be split. Here are my reasons:

1) In this time and age, men and women are equal and so its only fair that both are contributing to the dating experience, including the financial cost of it. Any argument for why the guy should pay for the first date, why can it not equally apply to women?

2) If I, as a guy, pay for first dates, thats essentially indirect prostitution. I may not be buying sex outright and no one is entitled to sex just because they paid for the other person, but sex is something many guys have in the back of the minds when offering to pay. Otherwise why pay for the first date because after all no one consistent foots the entire bill when they hang out with another friend for the first time? The closest analogy I have to this point is buying escorts. Although escorting is illegal and is legally considered prostitution, youre technically not buying sex directly even though the intent is there. Technically youre just buying the girls time and if sex happens then it happens but an escort doesnt inherently owe you sex because you paid only for her time

3) Most dates, in my experience, dont progress past the first date even if I think the first date went great from my perspective. For a random first date, if I pay for that date I have a decent likelihood of not getting a return on that investment. Im not referring to sex here, but rather a second date

4) Not paying on the first date helps weed out gold diggers so Im not wasting time/money on several dates before realizing the girl is a gold digger

The only instances a guy should pay for the girl on the first date are if 1) he suggests an upscale or otherwise expensive date or 2) the guy genuinely wants to treat the girl (for ex, maybe if they were friends before)

One common argument Im expecting to hear is that whoever asks the other person out should pay for the date. I strongly disagree with this for a few reasons:

1) The vast majority of women do not ask men out for a first date. Yes, some women do but most of them will not. Even if the woman wants a date, the typical women will likely just wait for the man to make the first move in asking her out rather than directly asking the man out herself. So Im practice this argument essentially automatically becomes the guy almost always paying for the first date

2) When you invite another friend to hang out with you, its typically expected that each person will pay for themselves. Why is it any different for dating regardless of who asks out who as long as the date is not overly expensive? If the guy suggests a date that the girl cannot afford, the girl should either directly state that its out of her budget, offer an alternative suggestion that is within budget, or decline the date altogether. The girl should not automatically assume the date will be paid for by the guy.

[Assistant] You could sidestep this entire drama if you just invited women on dates that don't cost money. Then when you are comfortable enough, explain how you think buying her meal makes her a prostitute and see how that goes.


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

[User]
Is it true that you can only get chicken pox once?

If that is true, why is that? Does our body develop immunity to the disease after having contacted it once?

[Assistant]
Normally you only get chickenpox once because the varicella zoster virus (which is part of the herpes family) that is responsible for it causes a powerful immune reaction that is highly protective against symptomatic reinfection, preventing another bout of chickenpox.

Repeat bouts of chickenpox can, however, occur in people with a severely impaired immune system.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does urine come out yellow and not green or blue?

When you're hydrated your urine comes out clear but after a long night of drinking it can come out darker yellow. Why not blue after drinking something blue or brown assuming all the colors mixed together?

[Assistant]
Only certain specific foods (such as beets) and some medications change the colour of your urine to a colour other than yellow. When you drink a blue drink for example, most of the time your urine wont become blue because the molecule that makes the drink blue doesnt pass through into your urine. Beets contain a pigment called betanin which does pass through to your urine, resulting in pinkish-red urine if you eat enough beets!

(Also certain diseases can cause your urine to become different colours. Go to a doctor if you have any worrisome changes such as blood in your urine or a different colour urine.)

What gives urine its yellow colour is a pigment molecule called urobilin which is a waste product from your body (it comes from dead red blood cells). When youre well-hydrated, theres way more water compared to urobilin, so your urine looks pale yellow. When youre dehydrated, theres less water and more urobilin, so your urine looks darker yellow. Its like when youre making juice from one of those frozen juice concentrates... the more water you add, the paler the juice gets :)

Hope that makes sense :)


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

[User]
[Star wars] What's the deal with shore troopers?

The shore troopers (or coastal defence troopers) are a type of storm trooper with yellowish armour and slightly less of it.

The need to have a different type of storm trooper just for defending the coast is dubious at best, but the specific differences are even more puzzling.

I don't understand the need for a different helmet, but stranger still is the fact that they have no armour covering their thighs and crotch.

What reason do the empire have for ensuring that their coastal defence force can easily whip out their junk?

[Assistant] The shore trooper seems to be more akin to the scout troopers, with armor that prioritizes mobility and weight. Likely, this was due to the prospect of a trooper needing to transition into and out of shallow water, where drag created by more elaborate leg plating would increase fatigue on the trooper.


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

[User] ELI5: How does MEGA.nz download files within the website before downloading them to my computer instantly?

[Assistant]
The files are not downloaded to your cache, they're downloaded to your browser local storage. This is different to a cache, as the cache is a way to store website assets that are reused on subsequent visits (think website images, favicons, fonts, stylesheets).

Local storage is something akin to actual storage that can be utilised by a website to store, manage, and update data within it. Think persistent data (rather than temporary cache), and in the case of Mega, the file you're downloading.

The way Mega works, is it streams encrypted bytes to your local storage (this process can show the download progress percentage etc.). Once the stream is finished, client side scripts decrypt the file in your local storage and send a save file prompt to your browser referencing the file in storage. The browser then "downloads" the file, and since it's already on your machine, it's instant.


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

[User]
[PPG]Why didn't the government seize the Powerpuff Girls? Or at least the Professor's documents related to their creation?

Giant monsters seem to be a pretty big problem in their world. You'd think the government would want to be able to mass produce super heroes, especially ones so eager to help(for free).

[Assistant]
The government was already fully in control of the Powerpuff Girls, especially when it came to pickle jar emergencies.

Giant Monsters were only a problem in Townsville because of the nearby Monster Island.  Other cities did not have that problem (as the girls discovered when they briefly lived in Citiesville) and the Powerpuff Girls would cause more harm than good trying to fight normal mundane crime.


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

[User] ELI5: if I were to fly around the world, would I get there faster by flying against the rotation of the Earth, or would it be the same?

[Assistant]
Your absolute speed would be greater when flying with the rotation of the earth. But your speed relative to the surface of the earth would stay the same because the medium you're flying through, the atmosphere is rotating with the earth.

Either direction you go, you will be traveling through the atmosphere at the same speed.


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

[User] ELI5: How do crabs, or any crustacean in fact, breathe on both land and in water.

[Assistant] Not all crustaceans are capable of doing this. Some are exclusively aquatic, some are exclusively terrestrial, and some can be on both land and in water with different degrees of comfort in either place. For land crustaceans or crustaceans that can live in both land and water, the key is keeping their gills wet. As long as the gills are wet, oxygen in the atmosphere comes in contact with the moisture on the gill and then the gill extracts that oxygen. They can keep their gills most by going into some body of water to wet them, keeping them moist with atmospheric humidity, or by excreting water from their bodies.


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

[User]
Is this only reason we have different opinions on things because we dont have complete knowledge of anything?

My understanding is that there is knowledge where things can be known and opinion where things cant be known. Where there is 100% knowledge (describing how things do in fact behave), there is no room for interpretation or opinion.

Does that mean if we knew everything, there would be no difference of opinion because there would be no such thing as opinion?

Side note: Im not a philosopher at all, just someone who is getting started in learning about this field.

[Assistant] It seems like there are probably some things for which it is impossible to "know" things about. For example, we can't "know" what the tastiest flavour of ice cream is, but it seems to be dependent on different attitudes of different people.


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

[User] [Zootopia] Why is a sheep the same size as a rabbit?

[Assistant]
As a rule, sheep are bigger. Most sheep -- such as those working in the railcar-lab, or the sheep sharpshooter -- are bigger. Assistant Mayor Bellwether seems to be a somewhat odd exception. It is possible that she has a unique condition -- perhaps a glandular condition, or a congenital disorder -- which makes her much smaller than the average sheep.

It is possible that Mayor Lionheart choose her for being having an "inspirational" biography of overcoming that condition and achieving whatever (relatively) high position she had before becoming assistant mayor. Certainly Lionheart didn't choose her because he liked or respected her -- and if all she did was balance the ticket for the sake of the prey vote, presumably Lionheart could have chosen some prey species member with whom he had a better relationship.

On the other hand, no one seems to remark on the fact that she's an unusually small sheep. It is possible that, just as there are a variety of sheep (Chios, Merino, etc) generally developed under human intervention, in Zootopia some sheep species have naturally evolved into tiny, royal antelope-sized people, perhaps on isolated island environments before all mammals became sapient. (Isolated island species can often get really big or really small compared to mainland variants.)


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

[User] [ATLA] Zuko captures Aang in Book 1 and brings him back to the Fire Nation. Would Iroh have intervened or would he have stayed by Zuko's side?

[Assistant] I could see him trying his best to intervene in a "low impact" style; Iroh isn't one to kick in a door when he can talk someone into opening it for him. He's got the trip back to the Fire Nation to work his influence, and could take steps to belay their return long enough to get something accomplished. Failing that, more subtle sabotage or quietly aiding an escape attempt could be in the cards. Of course, worst comes to worst, he might just need to personally bust the kid out.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are school textbooks so large and complex, when teachers never have time to use the whole book in a year?

[Assistant] Because they want to cover as many different topics as possible and some teachers might want to cover different things than other teachers. Also they should offer pupils the possibility to read them by themselves and thereby cover things that the time is missing for.


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

[User]
Can someone explain the equation E=mc2 in terms a 16 years old can understand?

I've tried to read about it, but, well... I don't get it. Does it mean every object with a mass contain energy? Or something like that? Educate me, science.

[Assistant]
Prior to Einstein, people thought energy came in two varieties: kinetic energy, which is energy that comes from motion; and potential energy, which is energy that comes from location or configuration.  When you accelerate a car, you increase its kinetic energy, and when you stretch a rubber band, you increase its potential energy.

Einstein demonstrated that there was a third form of energy.  This energy is energy that things have just because they exist.  It is essentially what we had previously identified as mass; in fact, this energy is proportional to mass and has value *mc^2*.

Why does this matter? It matters because energy is conserved; the total amount of energy doesn't change, but it can shift from one form to another. Drop a ball and it speeds up; it loses potential energy but gains a corresponding amount of kinetic energy.  Thanks to Einstein's insight, we learn that mass must be included when we look at how energy can shift forms.  In accelerators like the LHC, the kinetic energy of colliding protons is converted, in part, into mass, in the production of new particles.  When a muon decays, it ceases to exist, but the energy from its mass becomes the combined mass and kinetic energy of the decay products (an electron, a neutrino, and an antineutrino).  And, at root, these things can happen because of *E=mc^2*.


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

[User]
[Batman Begins] the League of Shadows is noticeably filled with Westerners, as is its claimed past actions entirely Western. Is the League as ancient as claimed or is it a more recent creation using a monastery in a lawless region and a false pedigree?

And is Ras Al Ghul the creator of this secret War Cult or is he a part of a the Dread Pirate Roberts type of system?

[Assistant] One possibility is that the League routinely recruits operatives who will be at home in the cities it's planning to destroy next. "Ducard" didn't particularly *need* to recruit Bruce Wayne; he came and got him because he wanted to, and the reason he wanted to is because he was Gotham's favorite son, and he was meant as a weapon against his own home. Maybe the current Westerners were also recruited to attack Gotham specifically, or other Western cities. Over the years, the League slowly morphs to resemble its planned victims.


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

[User] [ELI5] Do animals perceive us as being smarter than them?

[Assistant]
There's a documentary about dogs that shows an experiment about the connection between dogs and humans. Dogs and wolves were both trained to open a Plexiglas puzzle to retrieve a treat. An examiner was present during these experiments.

After a series of puzzles were offered, the subjects were offered an unsolvable puzzle. The wolves kept working at the puzzle. The dogs, after finding the puzzle unsolvable, came to the examiner and pleaded for help. So this dog at least counted on its handler's specific superiority at retrieving the treat.

But, honestly, stupid people don't realize, for the most part that they are stupid.


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

[User]
[The Elder Scrolls] Where do books come from?

Pretty much every citizen of Cyrodil is literate, books are a common and prolific luxury, even in Skyrim most abandoned forts have at least a modestly stocked reading area some where. But there's no apparent source, I took a trip to the Imperial City Market District which even has a news paper which would imply printing press technology and perhaps a central book factory exists somewhere, but a thorough examination of the premises revealed nothing but a handful of desks so maybe Khajiits are just really good at writing really quickly with no mistakes or cramping? Where is all this reading material coming from?

[Assistant]
It doesn't have to be anything as complicated as a printing press. Woodblock printing has existed more than a millennia before the Gutenberg Printing Press.

If the technology for a stamp and paper exist. That's all that's needed to print on a massive scale.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why Do Slightly Opened Car Windows Make That Awful Sound

When I'm driving down the road, I can roll down a back window slightly and i get a god awful sound. It's rythmic and kills your ears. What causes this?

[Assistant]
Air is trying to go both in and out of the window at the same time. If you crack open another window, the air pressure fluctuations will go away.
Same as if you were pouring soda out of a 2 liter bottle; it comes out in rapid gushes. But if you poke a hole in the side, the sofa flows out smoothly.


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

[User] What can I do to advance the cause of open access?

[Assistant]
Opt to publish open access whenever possible. Educate your colleagues on open access. Refer them to apply for editorial boards on open access journals.

To me, the biggest barrier is old school thinking, which can change when we present better options.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do people make aimbots?

Something I've always been curious about.

[Assistant]
When you play an online video game, the server produces and sends you information about the virtual world you are playing in, including the position of other players, so that your computer can generate it graphically.
You route some of that information through to an external program, who's function is to identify where the other players are (on your screen) and move your cursor to them so that you don't have to manually aim at them.


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

[User]
[Mario] What lead the goombas to collaborate with Bowser when he invaded the Mushroom Kingdom?

Were the goombas a low status caste within the Mushroom Kingdom, dissatisfied with the lowly position in society, and Bowser recruited them by promising a better lot in life?

Were the goombas forcibly conscripted into Bowsers forces, but theyre sufficiently motivated soldiers (whether out of fear or duty) for Bowsers cause that Mario has no alternative but stomping them?

Are they just mercenaries working for money?

[Assistant] When you're as physically weak as most Goombas, the smart thing to do is to side with the winner. Before Mario came into the picture, Bowser had the clear advantage. Now, sadly, most live in fear of the Koopa Troop and saunter forward only to avoid being hassled by them.


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

[User] ELI5: How do barcodes and their scanners work? Is there a global catalog of every barcode ever? Are no two alike? How does the scanner read the lines?

[Assistant]
The black lines of the barcode absorb light which is read and translated into bits of imformation. the thickness and order of these lines represent a number. That number is filed through a database to find a matching one. When a match is read, any needed information is pulled to whatever use it is for.

There are tons that are alike, but they generally belong to one of a few different standards. Everything is organized by type of product, and then various specialized types of categorizations. Each set of standards uses each digit and different number of digits for various reasons and it is all about how the standard making organization decides to use it. Companies and manufacturers adopt certain standards for the barcodes and then they use it when they place it on a product.

Currently the most popular and accepted standard is maintained by ISO (International Standards for Organization) who manage many many many standards from the definition of a meter, a second, how thick lines should be on a blueprint, paper size, barcodes, etc.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] About the construction of the Death Star

In Episode II we see the Separatist Alliance on Geonosis with plans to build the Death Star, but in Rogue One we're told Galen Erso was responsible for it. Is it a plot hole or is there an actual explanation?

[Assistant]
The station itself is rather mundane and just existing technology on a larger scale. What made the death star truly a work of sublime engineering was it's main laser. More powerful than nearly any other weapon devised prior it was the ultimate expression of destruction. The separatists designed it's bones. The empire funded it's construction. Krenik envisioned it's final form. Tarkin put it to use. But Erso was the one who created her power systems of reactors and the exact amount of energy needed to turn Kyber crystals into a planet destroying engine rather than a chaotic mess.

The separatists wanted a massive battle station but Palpatine and tarkin and krenik wanted more. Galen Erso was the one who made it more than the sum of its parts and ultimately the one who destroyed it and the trillions of credits and dozen years and millions of lives spent to create it.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is Canada still technically a constitutional monarchy?

Why hasn't Canada separated itself officially from the UK after years of independence?

[Assistant]
Think of it like growing up with your parents. When you're young your parents tell you what to do, but as you get older you need them less and less. Now some people or countries in this case don't really like their parents so they decide they want to get emaciated (a fancy word for them not having any control over you) and they become republics.
Canada on the other hand really didn't mind it's parents and as it got older decided it could be more and more independent without them. Canada basically got to the point where our parents don't really have any input on our decisions. Any time Canada makes a law we still ask our parents if it's ok but we're adults now so they really can't ever say no. So we operate as if our parents aren't in our lives. Every once in a while our parents come to visit and a lot of people really like having them here.
The reason we haven't emancipated is because now there really isn't a point, it would just be a lot of work to separate from someone we really don't mind.


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

[User]
[Jumper] I seem to have developed an ability to teleport at will, and a capacity to teleport things with me(~ a car's worth if I'm exerting myself). What's the most efficient way I can get rich while drawing the least amount of attention to me?

Ideally I would not want to be questioned by the IRS too much, but if there's a discrepency that can't be plausibly explained except by "teleportation" I'm willing to exploit that some given the unlikelihood of someone jumping to that conclusion.

How do I live comfortably?

[Assistant]
Start a nature walking podcast thats just you going for walks. Doesnt matter how popular it becomes. Just you going for walks in nature. Wide variety and some not close to home. Keep it going for months.

Have a shack on land that you personally own. Expensive but not impossible.

Wear a full body disguise.

Teleport somewhere to get a lot of gold. Doesn't matter from where just dont leave any DNA or show any identifying traits.

Get rid of identifying marks on the gold. Hit anything that looks like a stamp with hammer. Gold is soft it will deform this way.

Bring it to shack in the woods on the land you own. Wait for a big snowstorm to pass or some other kind of inclement weather to pass. Then kick in the door and make a make shift little fire either inside or right outside. Make it look like someone used it as emergency shelter.

Today your going for a walk on the land you own to show your followers the area around your house.

Now you have a legit reason to be recording some random video of yourself and no one will be suspicious as to why you have a random recording of yourself taking a walk. Then someone must have left it for some unknown reason after they left your shelter. But you don't even have to come up with a reason. That's the beauty of it. You after all did not leave it behind so it's not on you to explain  why that's the part that trips other people  ip. "Dunno just found it" is all you have to say.

"Find" the gold in your shack on your podcast video freak out a bit when yop first see the cabin with a kicked in door, practice this it has to be authentic.

Dont upload the video.

Bring gold and video to local police. But leave a fair amount out that you stole. You dont want to show up to the police with the exact amount that went missing. It sucks but even a few bars is millions.

The video proves that you stumbled across it and no one is suspicious as to why your recording when they see your a nature walk podcaster on land that you own.

Wait the allotted amount of time for someone to "claim" their lost property.

Its going to take a while but no one can prove its the stolen gold.

Boom you legally own the gold.


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

[User] Other than radiation, fusion, and fission, are there any natural processes which alter atoms from one element to another? [Chemistry]

[Assistant]
Fission and fusion are not the only kinds of nuclear reactions that happen in nature. There are *many* more, and many of them will turn the reactants into different elements.

For example, capture reactions, knockout reactions, transfer reactions, spallation, etc.


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

[User]
How can we say that a black hole grows, if in our frame of reference, no matter actually falls past the event horizon?

I guess the title explains it all. I understand that matter that falls in the black hole experiences normal time so it would go past the horizon pretty quicky, but to the rest of the universe, matter never actually goes past the horizon. Or so I've heard. How can the black hole grow then?

Bonus question:

I have read that right before you go past the horizon, you can the rest of the universe sped up and blueshifted. How far into the future would you see? If you can see billions of years or even more time pass by, how does that fit in with the idea that black holes don't actually last forever, but evaporate over incredibly long times (the smaller ones go faster). Wouldn't the black hole evaporate before I could fall in?

This has been bugging me for so long now,  I hope to find some meaningful answers.

[Assistant]
The black hole can grow just like any other massive object, there will just be a lot of stuff near the horizon when it is looked at from our reference frame. It doesn't really matter whether or not the horizon of the black hole is seen to grow from our frame of reference; if you wanted to go check it out by falling into the black hole, as you got closer to the horizon the time dilation effect would go away and you would see stuff falling into it and see that it has grown. Another thing to point out is that the horizon itself will move outward to "meet" the in-falling matter; it is not quite as simple as imagining a static horizon that only grows once the matter falls past it.

Regarding black hole evaporation, if the black hole evaporates, then so will you, so you will not be there to "see" the evaporation. There is no paradox, because even though you see the rest of the universe sped up as you fall into the black hole, you will be evaporated before the end of the universe (ie very quickly, from your perspective). Note that evaporation is a quantum process, so we won't fully understand it until we have a fleshed-out theory of quantum gravity.


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

[User] ELI5: How is the decriminalization of all drugs in a country beneficial?

[Assistant]
1) It frees up police resources to better utilize their time. Fewer court dates, less paperwork, etc... Police departments are still free to take down dealers and distributors, but are no longer concerned with catching the average user.

2) Speaking of the average user, it frees them up to seek treatment without fearing jail time. This theoretically reduces the number of addicts by getting them help.

3) it reduces prison populations, which saves everyone a little money.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it that if a 15 year old kills someone, she's charged as an adult, but if she sleeps with an adult man, she's a "child" and the man must register as a sex offender?

[Assistant] You've learnt from an early age that killing is wrong. It's only since you've been 11 that you really start learning about sex. Society's opinion on murder is very clear cut. Don't. Sex is so much more complicated. You need to be older to understand all of it than you need to be to know not to murder.


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

[User] [Skyrim] Why are the bards of Skyrim limited to only 5 songs? Is there a ban on other music or are they simply uncreative?

[Assistant] Have you ever listened to the radio and it seemed like they only played the same dozen or so songs over and over and over again? It's like that. They're songs that have spread far and wide and everyone knows them and they're popular, so you only hear those 4 or 5 songs because that's all that people request.  No one wants to hear Lynly Star-song's new original ballad or the new refrain penned by Giraud Gemane, it's all "Hey, play 'The Dragonborn Comes'" or "Stop playing that original music crap, we want to hear 'Ragnar the Red'!"


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

[User]
[DC] Could Martian Manhunter or some other powerful telepath calm a Red Lantern down, or make a Green Lantern afraid? How much effort would it take?

I know Martian Manhunter was able to make the Joker sane for a little while even if it took a tremendous amount of power. Could the same be done to beings powered by certain emotions?

[Assistant]
Lanterns are inherently beings of immensely strong emotions, empowered by a ring, so they're hard to control. They can also make constructs to boost their immunity.

So, they would probably have to beat them into submission or ambush them.


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

[User] [Idiocracy] Could the world be saved after the movie, or was it too late to make humanity "smart" again?

[Assistant] THe society that they had in Idiocracy was eminently saveable, for one simple reason - the stupid people knew they were stupid. THey didn't argue that they were totally smart to make themselves feel better, an try to argue, and throw tantrums. WHen it was pointed out they were stupid, and this other guy was smart, the president immediately said "Then put the smart guy in charge".


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40K] What if the Imperium simply... stopped combating the Orks?

If the Imperium Stopped combating the Orkz, would the Orkz continue raiding our worlds? Let's say that, for simplicity's sake, the Imperial Guard, any space marine chapters, and even ordinary citizens who might have weapons, just stopped fighting Orkz, even when provoked and even though they are xeno scum. Like, they just let themselves get mauled by Orkz. Would the Orkz even continue attacking Imperial worlds or soldiers if there's no fightiness in their enemy?

[Assistant]
>Like, they just let themselves get mauled by Orkz. Would the Orkz even continue attacking Imperial worlds or soldiers if there's no fightiness in their enemy?

Orks enjoy violence even if it is one-sided. For them, taking at unarmed child, ripping its head off and then smearing it all over their vehicle to paint it red is INCREDIBLY HILARIOUS.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How does the Stun setting work on an Imperial Blaster?

We know how a normal blaster shot works, a bolt of plasma contained in a magnetic sheath, but the Stun setting looks and acts completely different. Instead of a linear bolt, it looks more like a wave or a pulse, and it doesn't look like plasma. So what exactly is happening, how does it work?

[Assistant]
The stun setting bypasses the gaseous ammunition that normally gets fired from the weapon, and instead fires from a secondary emitter on the barrel. This emitter unleashes an electromagnetic pulse that overloads the target's nervous system.

Speculation: The stun setting is likely just as lethal to several species, and is probably lethal to humans in certain circumstances. But it's adequate as a general stun setting for the vast majority of living targets.


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

[User] How do lava lamps work?

[Assistant]
A lava lamp uses a heater at the bottom of the lamp - this means that the bottom of the vessel is warm, but as you move away from the heater (towards the top of the lamp) it cools down.

The 'lava' inside the lamp is a certain type of wax/oil that is chosen for the way it interacts with water - when cold it is heavier than the water used in the lamp and sits at the bottom, then when it warms up it expands, which makes it slightly less dense than the water and lets it start to float upwards. As the lava reaches the higher levels of the lamp it then starts to cool down until it becomes more dense than the water, sinking back down again.

The lava moving is this cycle constantly repeating - blobs of lava heating up enough to rise to the top, then cooling down enough to fall to the bottom where they will be warmed again and rise up... Because the lava is liquid and doesn't heat uniformly, it then takes on the organic appearance with different blobs all being at different stages of this process, combining and splitting as they heat and cool slightly differently on the top and bottom.


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

[User] ELI5: how do breeders ensure diversity among their animals' offspring? Wouldn't they have to constantly buy new breeding pairs?

[Assistant]
Sometimes they don't.

There are things called line breeding in which breeders intentionally breed related animals (such as ones with the same grandparent).

People will also sometimes breed daughters to their fathers..  one mating of such a combination usually isn't a problem but if that offspring was then bred to a close relative that is when problems might show up.

You didn't really say what kind of animal you were thinking about.. cats.. dogs.. horses.. cattle.. chickens..

It's quite different for dogs as it would be for horses because people might only own one pair of dogs at a time but with horses they might own 30 mares (females) and 2 stallions (males).. with cattle they might own 300 cows and 0 bulls (they can get frozen semen) so could pick different bulls each year.

Additionally most breeders don't keep the offspring - they sell them - and might on occasion keep 1 or 2 animals that they produced but then would breed to a different animal.


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

[User]
[Stargate Atlantis] Why didn't they bring a sarcophagus with them to the Pegasus Galaxy?

So we know from SG-1 that the sarcophagus technology can lead to your personality becoming evil with heavy repeated use of the device, probably in the hundreds of times. This why the Tok'ra don't use it. We also know that you can get somewhat addicted to it (Ba'al torturing Jack).

But for one-off fixes of cancer or mortal injuries or other diseases, why not have an emergency sarcophagus?

[Assistant] For the same reason they don't have one at Stargate Command for the same purposes.  It's took tempting and too addicting.  Once you start using it, even for emergency situations, you're going to keep using it.


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

[User]
[X-Men: Evolution] What was Professor Xs institute seen as at the beginning of the series?

At the beginning of the series, no one knows what mutants are, so what did non mutants think the institute was? Its not a straight up school since everyone goes to a separate high school. The gifted youngsters idea only goes so far because some of the X-Men dont get good grades. What other purpose did people see in the institute?

[Assistant]
A school that provides additional and supplementary educational activities.

And if your kid doesn't get good grades, yet some posh bald guy says your kid is actually gifted and he'll give them a place to learn, free of charge, then most families probably would take the opportunity and not look a gift horse in the mouth.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Who is the most powerful being in the Star Wars universe?

Who is the most powerful being in the Star Wars universe no matter cannon or not cannon? Earlier this day i was wondering who is the most powerful being in Star Wars and i always thout that it was Darth Vader but i found on the internet that Darth Sidius pre order 66 was stronger and then it went into a cycle of googling "Who is stronger than ..." and i've deducted that its Darth Revan cuz after googling "Who is stronger than Darth Revan" there was no talk of anyone stronger except the father but he is the force itself so he doesn't count. You all probably know a lot more about the Star Wars universe so i wanted to check is the theory that "Darth Revan is the most powerful being excluding the father wich is the force itself" is true.

[Assistant] Legends had a creature called Abeloth that Luke thought might have been the most powerful force-user in the galaxy, and the fact that something created a cluster of black holes(later known as The Maw) to contain her seems to corroborate that.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do birds never shut up?

There's an enormous tree outside my window where the birds are making noise day and night.  It never stops.  Doesn't it take a lot of energy?  Doesn't it reveal their location to predators?

[Assistant]
Birds are often brightly colored and noisy.  They don't avoid predators by hiding - they avoid them by simply being able to *fly away* at a moment's notice.  The noise is helpful actually, as birds warn each other if there are predators nearby.

Those birds tryin' to get laid, man.  They squawk so females come to them.


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

[User]
[The Sandman] Do we know exactly what caused Delight to become Delirium?

It's been years since I've read the books, but I can't recall if we ever get a full explanation.

[Assistant]
We're never told straight out and even *Destiny* doesn't know for sure because whatever happened to her isn't in his book.

However, there are hints about what happened. Delirium mentions having been engaged, but never married when her nephew Orpheus has his wedding. Destruction later mentions her broken heart at one time. So we definitely have a broken love affair sometime in her youth.

Then there's Delirium's profound dislike to being touched and especially kissed. In Endless Nights, Delirium's story centers on a rape victim as the only member of Team Crazy being able to reach Delirium, connect to her, and help heal them both.

To me at least, it seems that Delight was engaged to be married and her fiance raped her, with the trauma of that experience driving her change.


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

[User] Eli5: What happens to pacemakers, iron hips, and other implants in the cremation process?

[Assistant]
Silicone implants are often removed before cremation because they get sticky, and you don't want to hand over a ball of goopy ashes.

Pacemakers contain lithium batteries which can explode so they are removed before cremation as well.

Metal bits can be sifted out with an electromagnet after cremation if necessary.


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

[User] [40k] What is the typical day to day routine of an ork when not actively fighting. Travelling in warp space towards the nearest waaagh would be a good example.

[Assistant]
BOYZ IZ NOT ALL JUSS FITE ALL THE TIME.

WE PLAY GAMEZ. WE DO SPORTZ.

WE EET AN' DRINK AN' ME MERREE.

WE TINKER WIF DAKKA AND TRUKKS

SUM UV US RAIZ SQUIGS AZ PETS - AN' SUM SQUIGS GET 'UGE.

WE NO DIFF'RENT DAN MANY 'UMIES. 'CEPT 'UMIES IS SQUISHY.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does a seed "know" which way is down or up to grow?

Edit: I know it has to do with gravity. I'm asking the biological proccess that makes a seed know which way to go.

[Assistant]
Plants can sense gravity due to special containers (organelles) that store starch in a plant cell. The starch is rather dense compared to the rest of the cell so that the container will be affected by gravity. The containers are entangled in a mesh (actin) which can sense the direction they are moving. Based on these signals a special hormone (auxin) is distributed in the shoot to indicate the growth direction.
This is only one of many possible mechanisms.


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

[User] Are you born with empathy or is it learned?

[Assistant] Both, sorta. Empathy is sorta like language. Humans dont start with it, but they do have a disposition to acquire it. Babies, for example, dont care about anyone other than themselves, but children gradually become more empathetic and less self-centered as they get older. Furthermore, empathy development is guided by society.


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

[User] ELI5: When you cut a banana the join is wet, but when you break a banana the join is dry. Why?

[Assistant] When you cut something you almost always cell rip apart cells in the process.  When you break a banana, it tends to break along planes of weakness, which means the space between cells.  Since you rupture much fewer cells, there isnt as much water to spill out of the cell interior (cytosol).  Thats why the broken banana is more dry around the break than a cut banana is around a cut, all other things equal.


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

[User] [MCU] Rhodes is a apparently still a Colonel in the Air Force. Where is the War Machine armor stored so that US agents aren't trying to sneakily reverse-engineer it all the time?

[Assistant] Apparently after Iron Man 2, Tony took back the original Mark II suit (and stripped it of everything Hammer did). He made a new, custom, War Machine armour on the condition that the US Government let Rhodes use it rather than try to reverse engineer it. Presumably it has safeguards built in to detect tampering.


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

[User]
[Asimov] How do you get AI to follow the 3 Laws of Robotics?

It's a flawed system.

I am basing this on the idea that humans are just meat robots and that our own "Laws of Robotics" are programmed into us as a product of the evolution of social behaviour. Empathy and cooperation provide an evolutionary advantage for our species and as such, we follow them. (Although we regularly break them... if we feel the situation warrants it)

More over, we don't know how we're programmed because evolution programmed us over millions of years. If we create Robots, we are going to know how they are programmed. Even if we were to hardcode the laws of robotics into a robot's hardware, it makes it much easier to tinker with the system if you know how the system works.

At the very least, one has to have a law that one is not allowed to change the laws. I suspect that's not sufficient.

[Assistant]
The comparison to humanity simply doesn't work. Empathy and cooperation aren't laws, they aren't overriding things coded into us, they're simply one part of our psyches, a single tool. With machines, we're building their psyches from the ground up.

Of course, the idea that the three laws are insufficient is kind of the entire point of much of Asimov's work. We can compel machines to follow certain principles absolutely, but the real world is too complicated for three simple principles to create a viable ethical framework. When his stories take place when robots are just starting to become common, those stories are often specifically about how a computer's logic fucks up when trying to apply the principles to the real world. When he tells stories further and further into the future, the ethical programming of his robots gets more and more complex behind the scenes to account for edge cases and contradictions, though it stays based on the three laws, broadly.


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

[User]
[Furious 7][Fast and Furious 6][Spoilers]If two characters suffered the same fate , why is one alive and the other not?

I am talking about Gisele and Owen Shaw. Both were thrown , more or less, from the speeding plane, yet only Shaw is alive and comatose. That is explainable.

But Gisele is dead? How? And why did they not even bother checking the runway afterwards to check if she was alive?

[Assistant]
Could be a case of how they landed, (I've not seen the films so they might have shown them hitting the floor).

Gisele could have impacted the floor head first while Shaw might have impacted with his legs first allowing them to take the brunt of the impact.


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

[User]
ELI5: I am living in a building where we are several students with one room each and we share a kitchen. How is it possible that all our keys to our rooms fit the lock to the kitchen, but not the other student's rooms?

Everyone have a key that fit the lock to their own room and the lock to the kitchen, but not to the other student's rooms.

[Assistant]
A lock has a number of tumblers, which all need to be pushed to a certain height in order for the lock to turn. Each key is unique, and the bumps on the key correspond to the heights of the tumblers within the corresponding lock.

Imagine keys and locks as a 6 digit password. Now imagine that your kitchen lock is only a 4 digit password - the kitchen lock only has 4 tumblers, not 6. So your keys can all open the kitchen door if they have the right 4 bumps, but you can't open each other's doors.

Imagine the kitchen door is 0134. Imagine your door is 013461 and your roommate's door is 013413. You and your roommate can both open the kitchen because your keys have 0134 (which is all the kitchen needs,) but you can't open each other's doors because your keys don't match the lock.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] How would the galaxy turn out differently had Anakin Skywalker assisted Mace Windu in killing Palpatine?

Firstly what would be the immediate effects and how would they deal with the Yuuzang Vong?

[Assistant] A lot more Jedi in the galaxy even though they were temporarily mistrusted and restricted to the temple. After the investigation concluded, Palpatine's actions were pretty clear. The twins are still born, but Han never meets Leia instead she becomes a Jedi with her brother Luke and never has children. The yuzhan Hong enter a galaxy with many more Jedi. They still cause lots of damage, but Chewbacca survives because he is nowhere near it. However he has to flee the destruction of Kashyyk later. Fortunately the Republic Freedom Star, a massive moon sized battle station, used to quell the outer rim rebellion is able to repel the Yuzhan Vong invasion of the inner core.