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

[User]
How does a consultant actually find a firm's profit-maximizing price and quantity in practice?

In a microeconomics course, students are given "supposed" marginal cost and marginal revenue functions so they can solve for the profit-maximizing price and quantity.  In the real world, these functions must be found with real empirically data.

Suppose a consultant is trying to inform an entreprenier/investor on what price and quantity he should charge for his new business he wants to open up in a few months.  How does the consultant go about predicting what this firm's marginal cost and marginal revenue functions will be?

[Assistant]
Real world prices are not related to the theories of marginal cost and marginal revenue - this is very well documented and widely understood. These theories require conditions which do not hold in practice. For an example of a high quality survey that confirms this, see Alan Blinder's *Asking About Prices*.

Firm's typically set prices based on a markup over cost and use trial and error to determine (maximum) profit margins. That said, it depends on the industry, e.g., there are many industries which are "price takers" and therefore suppliers get the price they can get and do not "administer prices" with a profit markup over cost. There are also industries where prices are set by auction.


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

[User]
Why are the words for "mother" and "father" so similar in so many distinct languages?

I've recently realized that "mother" and "father" all sound quite similar all across the globe, even in places far away from Europe such as China (Mandarin: Mm) and Southern Africa (Zulu: umama).

Is this due to European influence, or is it something else?

[Assistant] 'Ma' is one of, if not the, the first distinct sound a child can make. The child's sound morphed in to the word for mother rather than the other way around. Giving a physiological reason why it's similar across languages, rather than a cultural one. Same with ba/pa/da becoming the root for the father.


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

[User] ELI5: How does the heat of the sun reach earth even though space is a cold void? How does it reach us through space?

[Assistant]
There's three ways heat can be transferred. Conduction, which is heat traveling by contact. Convection, which is heat moving around as hot fluids rise. And lastly radiation, which is heat transfered through light. Light has no problem going through a vacuum.

Radiation is how the sun heats the earth. The entire spectrum heats the earth including infrared and ultraviolet, but the sun peaks it's output in the visible light spectrum (by no coincidence really).

It's no different than you sitting by a fire and feeling the heat on you. That heat isn't because of the air between you and the fire, that's heat from the radiation (light, though not necessarily visible, fire emmit more infrared).


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

[User] ELI5: if mathematically derivatives are the opposite of integrals, conceptually how is the area under a curve opposite to the slope of a tangent line?

[Assistant]
Slope indicates how rapidly the function changes its value as it goes on.

Derivative of the integral (i.e area) describes how rapidly the area grows, i.e. the initial function itself (since the larger the function value is, the more it adds to the area).

Integral of the derivative means adding all those little slopes together. At every point the slope points to where the function is going next, so integrating them will, again, trace the initial function.


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

[User] ELI5: Why the encryption strength will not increase when an encrypted message gets encrypted again?

[Assistant]
If you use 2 different kinds of encryption, it will strengthen.

If you use 2 layers of encryption that works off the same algorithm, instead of requiring 2 passwords to solve (as you would expect), there is actually a third password that will solve both encryptions at once.

Pretend you encrypt a message that shifts every letter 5 letters over in the alphabet. Then you layer a second version of that that shifts all letters 3 letters over in the opposite direction.

Instead of decrypting by having to shift 5 forward and then shift 3 back, you could just shift 2 forward and unencrypt the message.


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

[User] What does Heidegger mean with Destruktion, is that the same as Derrida's deconstruction?

[Assistant]
Heideggerian destruktion is a hermeneutic practice specifically employed to demarcate conceptualizations of "what being is" across historical paths. Heidegger's central question and project is always "What is being?"--he is not satisfied with how the ancients, the scholastics, and even modern philosophers treated being (as beings). He thus seeks to "destroy" all conceptualizations of being hitherto; but by that he doesn't mean to just blow them apart and create something completely unrelated, but instead he seeks to transcend and integrate the former knowledge into an other, more "originary" type of knowledge. Later Heidegger differentiates between a "first beginning" and "other beginning" in Western philosophy whereas the other beginning would arise from fully grasping the first beginning.

For Derrida deconstruction flows from the structuralist and post-structuralist tenets of relational essences (i.e. there are no essences apart from context) and polarity. A thing only comes to itself as related to others things; a vast network of polarities generates the meaning of language constructs. Derrida believes one side of a pole is always privileged, while the other side is marginalized. Derrida does not mean to merely "destroy" polarity either; his project is in showing that valuations of polarity-constructs are arbitrary and hence always question-worthy.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we get old? Like if our cells get replaced over time and we also eat and the food becomes absorbed by the body, how come it be that we degenerate over time if we renovate constantly??

[Assistant]
Imagine you needed to build 100 model cars a day, and every day the instructions for building each car get older and harder to read.

Eventually you get a car whose instructions are too far gone to read, you accidentally build a Pontiac Aztec and its game over.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do international phone calls cost so much when communicating with international servers on the Internet is not?

Why does it cost me an arm and a leg to call from Korea but I can play a game from a Korean server for the same price as one in my neighborhood?  Are people just not demanding this from their phone carriers?

[Assistant] Phone companies don't care about you or about what you want or about what you need or about what you like. What they care about is the best way to bend you over the counter and fuck you for every single one of your dollars. Net neutrality? Maybe if you buy it. Gigabit internet? No one wants that. VoIP? We can't charge extra for phone calls if you do that.


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

[User]
When we say 70% of the human body is water, is that mass or volume?

"The human body is 70% water" is a really common "factoid" we hear when studying biology or just as a random fact. But is that referring to our mass or to our volume?

[Assistant] The statement can be accurate in both senses. The human body itself is roughly about as dense as water (sometimes less, sometimes more depending on body fat percentage and other factors), so if your body is 70% water, and the rest of it is about as dense as water, then your mass fraction and volume fraction of water are relatively the same.


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

[User]
[Lord Of The Rings/General Fiction] Who is the most capable figure of carrying the ring to Mount Doom?

So, we all know about the Ring. Temptation, corruption, etcetera.

Who's the most likely to carry it to the mountain?

I think perhaps Mr. Bean, if through accident.

Through purpose, I think The Doctor could do it.

The Terminator might manage it, an orc isn't gonna be able to kill him.

[Assistant]
The Doctor has a dark side (see the Valeyard, the Dream Lord, etc) and the ring would amplify that into something truly terrifying. Do not give the Doctor the ring.

Mind you, they are also a genius and a trickster, so it might be possible for the Doctor to come up with some scheme to destroy the ring. And nothing as simple as "use the Tardis to skip the trip" either, the Tardis has a personality too, and some material has shown it being capable of anger and jealousy, so those are traits the ring could take advantage of.

Believe it or not, the best answer might be...a Dalek.

A Dalek's personality is already pure hatred. It seeks nothing more than the extermination of all other living things. That would naturally include Sauron.

The mind of a Dalek is so evil that there's no way to really make it worse. There *is* the possibility that the ring could present itself as a tool to aid the Dalek in its goals...but Daleks already consider themselves perfect, and to do so would require convincing the thing it is incapable of victory.

Also, the ring had better work damn fast, because Daleks can fly, teleport, and an army of orcs wouldn't even slow one down.


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

[User] [Harry Potter] Does Professor Binns still get paid even though he is a ghost?

[Assistant] Ghosts don't really need anything as far as we know, so any monetary reward would be almost meaningless to him. Of course, if Professor Binns were so inclined, Dumbledore seems the type to seek out Binns' "next of kin" and award them the spectral professor's earnings.


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

[User] ELI5: What is oil, why do we cook with it, and why do things taste so much better with it?

[Assistant] Oil is edible fat. Eating fat is satisfying to humans because of the high calorie content. Cooking in fat is beneficial because it can get to higher temperatures than water or alchohol or vinegar. Fats also carry flavor. This is why garlic butter and flavored oils are a thing.


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

[User] As a developer, what is the biggest challenge youre facing now? What do you wish you could do better?

[Assistant]
gathering requirements, as always.

there's nothing i find particularly difficult about coding or designing a system that works if i know what it's supposed to do. it may not be the best but it'll be relatively solid and function as intended.

the hard part is putting multiple people in a room with different ideas on what they want and distilling that down into something that meets all of their needs.


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

[User]
[Norse Mythology] In what time period was Thor born?

Lets accept the standard presentation of Norse Mythology as true.

Ymir the giant came into being in the early days of creation. In time, the first Aesir god emerged from the ice. Eventually, his descendent, Odin, kills Ymir. Odin becomes the king god. He then fathers Thor, who goes on to be the hero of legend that we all know and love.

So, in what time period was Thor born? How old is he?

[Assistant] It's not actually stated, and Thor might be a god from an older religion's pantheon, as he's sometimes referred to as "Old Thor" despite being presented as an adult man in his prime in all aspects of the deity.


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

[User]
ELI5: How is the HTTPS handshake kept secret?

I believe I understand how HTTPS works: messages are sent from one computer to the other encrypted, so that when intercepted it's not readable. UNLESS you know the secret encryption method (I think they are called "keys").

So I envision two people saying: "Hey, let's talk in secret by replacing every letter in the alphabet with its corresponding number times three minus five"
"uh, brilliant, nobody will ever figure this out!"

Except of course if somebody listened to the first bit of their conversation.

From what I have learned this initial exchanging of encryption methods is called the handshake.

Seems like once the handshake is intercepted, the whole encryption breaks down.

So how is the handshake kept secret?

[Assistant]
Here's a reasonable analogy:

Imagine that you want to exchange a secret message with someone, who lives on the other side of the country, using the public mail service.

The only tools you both have at your disposal are an infinite supply of boxes (made of some magical unbreakable material), an infinite supply of unpickable self-locking padlocks which can be used to lock the boxes, and one key, which can be used to unlock any of those padlocks. For each of you the key you have will only unlock your padlocks, nobody else's.

So you take one of the boxes, put one of your padlocks in it, you *don't* lock the box, and you send that to your friend.

When your friend receives it, he puts the instructions about what secret code you'll use into the box along with one of his padlocks, and then locks the box *with your padlock*. He can no longer open the box because it's locked with your padlock, and importantly nobody else can open the box even if they intercept it while it's in the postal system.

When you finally get the box, you have the only key in the entire world that is able to open the box. You open it, take out his padlock, write an acknowledgement that you've received the message safely and securely, and put that into another box that you lock with *his* padlock. Now *you* can't re-open the box (nor can anyone else) -- only when your friend receives it can it be opened.

And that's the basis of public-private key encryption key exchange. You encrypt (lock) the message using the *other person's public key* which means the other person is the only one who can unlock it, because they have the private key.

-----

(Small print -- the above isn't a perfect analogy, in particular at the initial stage the first padlock you send to your friend is vulnerable to being intercepted en route and replaced with a different padlock belonging to someone who wishes to intercept & read all the communication between the pair of you: this technique is known as a "man in the middle" attack. To get round this in the real world the initial communication is signed by a certificate issued by a trusted authority, which guarantees to the recipient that the message they receive is the same as the one that was sent).


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

[User]
[The Simpsons] I'm losing my bearings.

So I was in Springfield over the weekend and it was a nice trip, the weather was decent and I was lucky enough to get a table at The Pimento Grove. The Lobster Newburg was amazing. I thought I'd had too much to drink however, because as I passed King Toot's music store, I could have sworn Moe's Tavern was next door. The next morning I woke and in the search for coffee, I noticed that King Toot's was actually across town and instead, the church neighboured the bar. Now that I'm home, I noticed other geographic inconsistencies. What gives?

[Assistant]
Most likely the problem is not with the geography but with you.  The most likely answer is that your memory is being affected by the massive amounts of radiation in the Springfield area.  You see, the nuclear power plant there is the least safe in the entire world (including Chernobyl) and has the worst record of contaminating the environment.  The local government, particularly the Mayor "Diamond" Joe Quimby, are extremely corrupt and completely under the control of the plant's owner, C. Montgomery Burns.  Springfield is a radiation circus.

So confusion and memory loss are two of the symptoms of being in Springfield.  Other symptoms:

1) Skin turning yellow

2) Loss of fifth finger

Suggestion: leave Springfield and see a doctor, now.


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

[User]
Is it possible to slow down radioactive decay through cooling?

Would it be possible to cool an element to where it will slow down the radioactive decay.

[Assistant]
To the best knowledge we have at present, radioactive decay is not perceptibly affected by any external conditions such as temperature or pressure.

Chemical composition of the substance slightly affects some forms (electron capture, internal conversion) of radioactive decay for some substances, but this is related to the availability of electrons in specific shells of these substances.


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

[User] How does a spider make a line of silk taut from point A to point B?

[Assistant] They start by creating a horizontal anchor line between two points, by ejecting a type of light very sticky silk in the same direction as the wind. When this anchor line is attached to the other side, the orb weaver will cross reinforcing that first line with a different type of silk.


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

[User] [MCU] How would Hela have gotten back to Asgard if Loki hadn't screwed up and opened the Bifrost?

[Assistant] Asgard can be reached by spaceship. Presumably any method of travelling such as the sling rings the sorcerers have will work. And agents of shield prove that can be replicated. So chances are hela was attack individuals and organisations which have tech/artefacts to allow travel and attempt to use one.


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

[User]
ELI5: Coaxial cable has the conductor that has to carry both upstream (so electric current that goes from my house to my ISP) and downstream (so electric current that goes TO my house). How can it be possible that two currents with opposite verses are in the SAME conductor?

Coaxial cable has the conductor that has to carry both upstream (so electric current that goes from my house to my ISP) and downstream (so electric current that goes TO my house). How can it be possible that two currents with opposite verses are in the SAME conductor?

[Assistant] Imagine throwing two pebbles into a pond at different spots. Both will create ripples on the water surface that spread out. When the ripples from the two pebbles meet, they just pass through each other undisturbed. The ripples from the first pebble will still reach the second and vise versa. Electrical waves propagate in metal wires, or light waves in fiber optics, in more or less the same way and near the speed of light. In fact a coax cable is best thought of as a waveguide for radio frequency electromagnetic waves, rather than current in a wire due to the very high frequencies involved.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do you often feel just as exhausted when you oversleep as when you under sleep?

[Assistant] Our brain goes through natural phases of sleep in cycles - to feel rested, your brain must go through 9-10 full cycles or so of the various stages of sleep (including REM which is when dreaming happens and the neural pathways are refreshed and lead to feeling rested). If your brain never enters into REM (a sleep disorder) or doesnt enter REM often enough (sometimes happens as a result of sleep conditions - too hot, too cold, not dark enough, etc.) it could lead to feeling tired, regardless of how long you spend in bed asleep.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What does Emperor Palpatine do all day?

You know besides crushing the rebels, exploring the dark side etc.

[Assistant]
Most of the top-level daily business of the Empire is taken care of by the Imperial Ruling Council, who are His Majesty's most trusted advisors. Some members of the council, like Sate Pestage, were aware of his dual identity as Darth Sidious since long before the Jedi found out.

It's still a big galaxy, though. Palpatine from time to time will tour his domain examining regional issues, which always has a magnificent effect on local military morale and productivity. He may also seek out the most sacred sites of historical Sith to taste their power, and bask in his victory at fallen Jedi temples. More than once he's gone off on a secret trip for no reason other than to mess with Vader.

During his downtime, he has a harem of concubines, and often gets rather rough with the short Twi'lek girl he calls "my little green friend".


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

[User]
Why do our teeth not heal or regenerate when cracked or broken?

Every other part of the human body will heal itself to a point. Get a cut? Skin grows back. Break a bone? the body will seal the cracks. Why is it that teeth do not regenerate whatsoever?

[Assistant] The cells (ameloblasts) responsible for forming the outer, white layer of protection on our teeth (the enamel) die when the tooth erupts into the mouth. So while the enamel can become demineralized and remineralized like most hard tissues, it cannot form any new enamel whatsoever. The insulating layer just underneath (dentin) does have some slight self-healing properties but even that has severe limitations.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is it so difficult for computers to truly randomly generate numbers?

[Assistant]
Computers are just calculators; they do mathematical operations. Because of the nature of mathematics, you can't use simple math operations to generate truly random values -- math is inherently deterministic. However, you could design a function that is so complex that there's no immediately noticeable pattern in the numbers it generates. This is what computers do to generate random numbers. There is a tradeoff with different generator functions between speed and randomness, and depending on your needs you might choose different functions.

EDIT: it IS possible to generate random numbers by measuring something that is extremely complex, to the point where it is impossible to predict. For example, you can generate a number based on the amount of heat/electrical interference in a wire at a specific point in time.


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

[User]
CMV: People who study complicated subjects like the economy and American foreign policy for a living are unable to agree on important policy questions, so it's pointless for me to try to develop an opinion on those policies.

The idea is that, ultimately, I'll never know more about American foreign policy or the complexities of the economy than the people who study these fields for a living. And even they can't agree on what their conflicting data means. So, won't any opinion that I have inevitably be a watered down version of an expert's truer grasp of important policy questions? Which means that I'll only ever be "right" by accident. How am I supposed to form an objective understanding of complicated issues? Just trying to motivate myself to stay informed, but most of the time the amount of conflicting information out there overwhelms me.

EDIT: For those who are curious/want to avoid repeats, here are some of the arguments that I've found interesting/compelling, as I understand them:

* Complicated policy debates can often be interpreted as debates over what's most important right now. It's important for us laymen to weigh in on such debates because we're often better able as a collective to consider the big picture, whereas experts may have a difficult time seeing their fields in a wider context.

* On a similar note, policy debates can be interpreted as debates over who needs the most help right now. The same reasoning applies as above.

* **Many people are noting that there are many debates between politicians that are less debated among academics and policy experts. I probably wasn't clear enough about this in the post, but I'm more concerned with policy questions where experts have not come to a consensus. I understand that experts frequently come to a consensus.** Someone did note, however, that staying informed about ongoing debates among experts is an good way to stay up to date on when and where experts come to a new consensus on previously controversial questions. I did find this point compelling, and unique.

* Experts have a difficult time arriving at opinions themselves and look to the American people for guidance on broad questions. Similar to the first point, but I thought it was a particularly interesting argument.

* Attempting to navigate contested policy questions is a good way to maintain and improve your critical thinking skills in general and especially with regards to public policy, and engenders a culture in which more people are informed, thus increasing the level of debate in the country, even for experts.

[Assistant] Not a very good counterpoint, just a thought: If everyone thought like this, we would see less and less political analysts in the future, which will lead to more and more tunnel vision when working through complex problems.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does garlic smell good in food but bad in breath?

[Assistant]
As you are eating it, your body begins breaking down garlic immediately into sulfuric compounds.  These sulfuric compounds remain in the mouth and smell very similar to the compounds that the bad breath causing bacteria in your mouth also create.

Secondary to that, as the garlic passes into your digestive tract, your body decomposes garlic into allyl methyl sulfide.  This is distributed through the bloodstream to the lungs, then exhaled through your mouth or you just burp it up.  This is what causes garlic breath to linger even after brushing your teeth, mouthwash, etc.

It smells pungent and aromatic as a food while also being slightly sweet if cooked.  The chemical reaction that occurs  during digestion is what makes it no longer appealing after we eat it.


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

[User]
[Spongebob Squarepants] Why doesn't plankton just steal from customers who order takeout?

Or would that just be mugging?

[Assistant] Nobody orders takeout from the Krusty Krab. If you're friends with the chef, you might be able to snatch a few 3 A.M patties, but otherwise, the burger is so delicious that you literally cannot avoid eating it as soon as you get it.


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

[User]
ELI5: when we feel like a weight has been lifted off our chest after being relieved from something, what is that actual weight feeling?

I hope thats the correct flair, but when we are feeling anxious, or very sad, or scared, or worried, we feel theres an actual weight on our chest. Then when we get relieved it really feels like the weight has disappeared and we feel light again! What is that weight in biology terms?

[Assistant] Stress makes our muscles tense and that makes our bodies feel heavy and tired. When whatever is stressing us out is over or gone, our muscles relax from being tense, thus we feel lighter, like a weight has been lifted off of us.


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

[User]
In the x^2/x = x, what would happen if x = 0?

I am probably forgetting or missing something very simple thanks to being years passed to my math education. But this confuses me.

Because of the obvious you can't divide by 0.

[Assistant]
An equation is only valid as long as both sides are actually defined. So this equation only holds for x non-zero, because if x=0 the left-hand side is not defined.

If you ever have learned about limits, you do maybe recall that one possibility to interpret your question differently is: what is the limit of x^2 /x as x->0? The answer 0. This does however in no way say that x^2 /x is defined at x=0.


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

[User] [Home Improvement] Binford was a national brand so why wasn't Tool Time a national show?

[Assistant]
Binford was just a sponsor. Local shows have national sponsors all the time.

Besides Tool Time had large costs. Never got around to any affiliate partnerships plus legal was worried absolutely it exposing potential safety issues.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What do those Jedi do during their time off?

When they're not off exploring the galaxy or on some far-away mission in the Outer Rim, what do they do in their spare time? Do they just chill at some apartment in Coruscant or do they have lodgings at the Jedi Temple? Do they go home for the holidays?

[Assistant] Most likely, they meditate, train, attempt to divine the future using the Force, and do a lot of what we, as movie-goers, would consider minor things: Adjudicating disputes, consulting for politicians, etc.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does it seem like after you go through some tragic events in life you lose the capability of having feelings?

I've been numb for like 2 years after losing a loved one and other eventful things. I was always a very emotional guy but I feel like I'm physically incapable of crying if I wanted to now.

[Assistant]
Coping mechanism.

You're a young child and you lose your favorite stuffed animal - it's the worst thing that has ever happened to you and you tell yourself that you're not going to let it happen again so you'll never feel this pain again.

You're twelve years old and the family pet that you love and grew up with dies. You thought that the loss of a stuffed animal was the worst things could feel, but you've learned you were wrong.

You're eighteen and a few months into college when your long-time high school girlfriend, who went to a different college, decides it's impractical to try maintaining a long distance relationship and she breaks up with you. All the love and memories you once cherished are now haunting you. You've felt this pain before but this time it's worse because of all the effort and sacrifice you put into the relationship, and now all you feel is unloved and betrayed.

You're in your mid-twenties and you learn that a good friend or family member died much too young, and now it's not just happy memories haunting you as you work through the pain of your loss, but an even deeper fear as you suddenly become all too aware of your own mortality.

Now you're in your early thirties, looking at your newborn baby, asleep on your chest, and your wife snuggling up against you. You're surrounded by love but everything you've ever loved has ended in an increasingly deeper pain. You think about the pain facing your child when they lose their favorite stuffed animal, the future sorrow of losing the now three year old dog that's curled up at your feet, the suffering of their first breakup, the fear of losing them in a car accident, and the understanding that the ceaseless marching of time continues on without regard for you, what or who you care about, or the agony it has left in its wake.

Everything you've ever loved ends in pain. That's when you begin to consider that perhaps the numbness is the most merciful thing you could do for yourself. Perhaps feeling empty is the more bearable alternative to the dizzying highs of love that always end in the depths of crippling pain.

You begin to think that nothingness is best...

Because it seems like that's the only coping mechanism you have left to try...

*(Edit - a word)*


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

[User] what lies beneath the sand of a desert?

[Assistant]
The canonical desert landscape is generally thought to be a sand dune, but this is a misconception. Even in the great Sahara desert only a fairly small portion is made up of sand dune expanses (ergs), most of it is hamada (bare stone and rock).

Generally speaking, just about any rock can underlie a sand dune field, more so since sand dunes are slightly mobile.


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

[User] ELI5 What is it that makes it so computers can't solve captchas?

[Assistant]
It requires image recognition capabilities that don't yet exist outside some advanced machine learning laboratories.

Asking a computer to look at a cluttered image of a street corner and identify a fire hydrant is not something it is going to be able to do unless it's had a lot of practice identifying fire hydrants from multiple angles, zoom, color, etc.

Humans are able to solve them because we process things differently. We can look at that image and process that fire hydrant, based on prior knowledge of what a fire hydrant looks like.


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

[User]
ELI5: What does the phrase "twice removed" or even "removed" mean when referring to a family member?

I never understood this, is it actually a thing or is it just a phrase?
e.g. My cousin, twice removed/

Thanks in advance for the answers.

[Assistant]
All that removed means is that there's a generational difference from you.  Your parents' first cousins are your first cousins once removed.  Your grandparents' first cousins are your first cousins twice removed.  So it goes up or down (your cousins' kids are your first cousins once removed as well.)

First and second and third and so on indicate how many generations you have to go back to find first cousins.  Your first cousins are your parents' siblings' kids.  When you have kids and your first cousins have kids, those kids will be second cousins (and your first cousin once removed).  When those kids have kids, they will be third cousins (and your first cousins twice removed).

Hope this helps and didn't just make it worse.  :)


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

[User] [The Boys] In the in universe movies, do they use special effects, real powers or a mix of both?

[Assistant]
It probably depends on the power.

For example, Homelander isn't going to actually laser an actor. They're doing multiple takes and killing or hurting an actor every take is no bueno. He's just gonna stare intensely at the other guy and someone will CGI in some lasers after.

Something like A-Train's speed? Sure, he can run across the set real fast. No CGI should be necessary. Just make sure he stops before running into anyone.


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

[User]
[My Hero Academia]If One For All is given to someone who already has a Quirk, will the next person to inherit it also get that Quirk?

See title. So for example if Bakugo had gotten One For All, would his successor get explosive sweat?

[Assistant]
Yes. In, fact, most recent chapters >!have Midorya gaining access to Black Whip, a quirk of one of the previous users. Since All Might was quirkless himself, and original owner only had quirk to transfer quirks, there's about five other powers locked inside One For All. !<

>!Maybe four, if we count tremendous strength as a separate quirk. !<


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

[User] How do our lungs separate the oxygen from all the other elements in the air?

[Assistant] They don't. Whatever you breathe in will end up in your lungs. In your red blood cells, hemoglobin has a high affinity for oxygen, so preferentially binds it. If you are breathing a gas that has a higher affinity for hemoglobin than oxygen (like carbon monoxide), then that molecule will preferentially bind instead of oxygen.


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

[User]
CMV: Twilight didn't deserve all the hate it got

Twilight: the series with the sparkling vampires that everyone loathed. Well, over the July long weekend, I finally read through the books, and I've got to say, they aren't that bad. In fact, I think the internet's hatred of them is completely undeserved.

I'm going to break down the main arguments against them I've seen and explain why they're bogus:

* **Twilight portrays an abusive relationship**. Not really. Twilight portrays reasonable consequences flowing from a human loving a vampire. If an undead monster is into you, chances are that monster's going to be scary, socially weird, stronger than you, and scared of hurting you. Once Bella becomes a vampire, the power imbalance is fixed and never mentioned again.

* **Girls are going to go out and look for a boyfriend like Edward. Even if he isn't abusive, that's still a bad idea**. Sure. And kids who read *Lord of the Rings* might think butchering orcs is cool and, in the absence of orcs, start killing their classmates. Either we acknowledge that teenagers can tell fiction and reality apart, or we ban all literature.

* **Bella gave up her humanity for a man.** If anything, Bella wants to be a vampire more than she wants Edward. She often alienates/annoys him by requesting immortality. These books are power fantasies about giving up your humanity and becoming sexy + strong, more than romantic fantasies.

* **Sparkly vampires are cringey.** All YA is cringey. Katniss being the coolest archer in all the districts is ridiculous. Harry Potter having amazing eyes that everyone recognizes is exhausting. Heck, jumping on over to adult high fantasy, 50% of the epithets from *A Song of Ice and Fire* are absurd. ("Mother of Dragons"? "Hand of the King?") Either you like the tropes/"twists" of the genre or you don't; they don't make any given book bad on their own.

* **The writing is bad.** The writing is middling. It's not going to win any awards, but it's serviceable.

In short, I firmly believe that Twilight is a perfectly fine series for teenagers which got a lot of undeserved hate. Change my view by convincing me that there's something uniquely bad about it, making the pushback warranted.

[Assistant]
No, Twilight didn't deserve all the hate it got.

But it definitely deserved most of it.

1) The problem isn't that Edward is scary, socially weird, etc. It's that Edward is all of these things and the narrative tells us all that he's the perfect boyfriend throughout all of it. Bella is head over heels in love with him, ignores the assorted objections from her dad and others, and in the end, turns out to be right.

2) You really don't see the difference between romance and murder? The entire point of the series is to make Bella and Edward's romance as tantalizing as possible. Meyer is trying to make the audience attracted to Edward, in a way that Tolkein isn't trying to get the audiance interested in murder.

5) No, it's bad. It constantly repeats the same descriptions and overuses other words (see: chagrin). Meyer is not a good writer.


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

[User]
[LOTOR] Would a nuke be enough to destroy the one ring?

If the ring somehow landed in a modern enough time to contain the weapons, could a nuclear explosion melt the ring.

It was destroyed by the fires of a volcano, even the first nuke (fat man) had a yield of 21 kt.

[Assistant] Major assumption that science can overcome magic. If that was the case, why not have Gandalf use his magic to create a fire hot enough to destroy the ring? Doesn't make sense. Had to return the ring to its place of foraging to destroy it. Not about energy, it's about conditional magic.


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

[User] Does sweat wicking fabric really exist? Or is this simply marketing, and an inherant trait of any fabric due to capillary action?

[Assistant] Since the introduction of fabrics like capilene from Patagonia the inside of the fabric is hydrophilic (pulls moisture in) with the outside being hydrophobic (moves moisture out). So yes they really are wicking fabric because something like cotton is only hydrophilic.


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

[User] [Marvel] Why is Captain America considered the one of the best hand to hand fighter if people like Thor, who has literal centuries of experience, are around?

[Assistant]
Thor doesn't *need* to be a good hand to hand fighter, and most of his battles don't depend on combat skill the way humans think of it.  Training himself to fight as though he's powerless might actually make him less effective; a human martial artist needs to dodge and block blows that Thor would be better off powering through.

Even against opponents that are on his power level, combat is a game of rocket tag.  The first person to land a solid overwhelming blow is generally going to be the winner.


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

[User] ELI5: Seriously, how do magnets work?

[Assistant]
A moving charge (a charge could be an electron) creates a magnetic field. There are two common types of magnets. Consider an electron orbiting the nucleus of an atom. This is a moving charge which creates a magnetic field. If every electron orbit of each nucleus in a macroscale object is aligned, all their magnetic fields will combine to create a strong field. This is how standard fridge magnets work. There is also what we call an electromagnet. Electromagnets use electric current to move charge and hence create a magnetic field. If your wire is looped many times around a circle, all the moving charge (current) combines to create a strong magentic field. Hopefully this gives you a rough idea of how fields are created, but there is more to the magnetic force.

A magnetic field can only act on other moving charges. This is why two magnets stick together (or repel each other), but a magnet might not act on a different object. The moving charges of one magnetic create the magnetic field which acts on the moving charges of the other magnet. If a magnet doesn't have a force on an object, it is because the electron spins of the other object are oriented in random directions, so the magnetic field creates a force on each nucleus that is in a random direction, and therefore the net force on the macroscale object is 0.

Some types of metals will have disordered electron spins, so they dont act as a magnet, BUT when put the metal in a magnetic field, the electron spins of each nucleus will align and the metal can then experience a net force from the magnetic field. This is why magnets will act on some metals even if they weren't magnetic to begin with.

Hope this helps. Please ask if you have questions about any of this.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did ancient armies survive off drinking beer/wine instead of water all the time?

Wouldn't they be dehydrated and probably hungover everyday?

[Assistant]
Important distinction to make - beer and wine today are extremely strong compared to what was drunk in ancient times.

Most of those drinks would be heavily watered down (the alcohol works to kill anything in the water), so while the drinks themselves could be similar to modern drinks in strength... they were not consumed that way.


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

[User] When the Nile floods the silt helps crops grow, when a river in North America Floods it ruins fields. Why?

[Assistant] Because agriculture around the nile was timed so the floods would occur when no crops were in the ground.  On the other hand, floods in North America tend to wash over crops, drowning them.  The Nile floods were also more consistent in timing than those on the Mississippi.


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

[User] Eli5: As a kid I was told the vowels were a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y, why does y only count sometimes?

[Assistant]
Letters aren't inherently vowels. Sounds are.

As it happens, the sounds that a, e, i, o, and u generally make are all vowels sounds. The letter y is kind of weird in it can make a yuh sound (as in yam), or an eee sound (as airy). In the former case it is not serving as a vowel, while in the latter it is.


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

[User] [Marvel] I am a Mutant and screw the US. Are there others countries more tolerant to mutants?

[Assistant]
Wakanda is tolerant to mutants... but not tolerant to immigrants. Great if you were born there with the X-Gene, but not so much anywhere else. Meanwhile, Latveria makes it easy for mutants to immigrate, as long as you're willing to pledge your loyalty to Dr. Doom. Canada is the absolute worst. The amount of secret black ops projects where they've experimented on mutants is staggering. You wouldn't expect it from them, but apparently they're just plain evil.

England is relatively mutant-friendly. France as well.

San Francisco is the one place in the US which is majorly pro-mutant rights, you may want to consider living there.


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

[User] ELI5 If a bathroom is full of steam why does a towel not get saturated absorbing all the water in the air and can still dry someone off?

[Assistant] Air that is saturated with water will hold onto that water until it cools down. So unless the towel is much cooler than the air, it's not going to significantly cool the air. Therefore, it's not going to create condensation on itself. Also, when water condenses, it gives off some heat, so what little condensation does occur will warm the air/towel ever so slightly, delaying any further condensation.


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

[User]
[General] Which fictional world has the strongest magic?

I was wondering if the magic in LOTR matches up to the magic in say, Harry Potter.

Is one noticeably stronger etc.? Not limited to LOTR and HP just examples.

[Assistant]
The Dresden Files may be a contender for the most powerful magic. Early in the series there are powerful rituals that are easily on the scale of WMD's. The simple spells are probably on the whole less overtly destructive than some things in Harry Potter, but scale extraordinarily well with preparation and setup.

Tolkien's magic is difficult to peg. Magic in middle earth is divine, and the users of said magic are themselves demigods. To complicate things further, we don't really see these beings flexing their metaphysical muscles, so to speak. Gandalf fell through fire and flame battling Durin's Bane and battled for days. Saruman corrupted Theodin and the Shire. Sauron's war at the end of the first age is only told in legendary form. There's very little to go on, because the power of magic isn't what the story is about.


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

[User]
[Super strength] Do characters with enhanced strength have trouble telling apart the weight of smaller items?

I was thinking of Superman.  He can lift boulders, cars, ect and toss them with ease, but does that huge strength make it difficult to tell the difference between 5 and 10 pounds?  How about weaker, but still strong people, like Spider Man?

[Assistant]
The general rule of perception is that humans can notice a 2% difference in quantities (TIL...).  If you can press 100 lbs you should be able to notice the addition or subtraction of 2.  So a superhuman who can press 100 tons would theoretically have difficulty distinguishing those same two pounds.

In practice that doesn't seem to be the case though.  Superman has equally fine control over a baseball and a tank.  This may be due to a lifetime of practice.  Those with newly acquired powers typically go through a phase where they "don't know their own strength".  In time, however, they usually adjust.


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

[User] Is a patch of grass one singular organism? Or is multiple? How can you discern one specific organism of grass from another?

[Assistant] A patch of grass can be a collection of individuals or, since grass is rhizomatous, a single individual can grow shoots from its root and become its own bunch. These are known as bunch grasses. So the answer to your question is sort of, "it's both!"


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

[User]
[starwars] If there can only be one sith master and his apprentice then how can the sith order grow?

I was wondering this after playing some SWTOR because if the sith's rule of 2 doesnt allow the order to expand then how can the sith order grow? It seems to me that the rule is bound to make the sith order contract and eventually dissolve into nothing if enough sith are killed off overtime due to wars and "accidents".

[Assistant] The Sith Order is not meant to grow, at least not at first.  Its membership is meant to stay stable at two, and no more.  This is to help keep them hidden from the Jedi, and to help ensure the Sith Lords would grow stronger.  By having each apprentice defeat his or her master and repeating the cycle, the Sith philosophy would (ideally speaking) ensure that the Sith are constantly improving themselves and growing stronger with each generation.  And then, when the time comes that the Sith Lords have grown powerful enough to emerge from hiding and destroy the Jedi, then they would do so, and the Rule of Two would no longer be necessary.


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

[User] ELI5:Why do schools still suspend kids when its usually pretty clear they don't want to be at school in the first place?

[Assistant]
The suspension is to remove them from the other students.  Having bad influences causes more problems with other impressionable students.

so it's for the benefit of everyone else, not the suspended student.


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

[User]
Could one of the first ever Homo Sapiens learn the same amount and same quality of information as a modern Homo sapien?

Does one of the first Homo sapiens have the same cognitive ability of modern Homo sapiens? Is what we know now simply collective knowledge that has been added on to each other or have we as a species gained the ability to learn more than our Homo sapien ancestors from 20 to 30 thousand years ago?

[Assistant]
This question is sort of confusing, but I'll give it a shot:

First of all, we would need to define what we mean by Homo sapiens. Some researchers consider Homo to have only one species (e.g. Milford Wolpoff, Alan Mann), because they don't see any evidence for any speciation events in the fossil record. A more mainstream view is that Homo sapiens arose about 200k years ago, but this is mostly based on the Omo skull, which looks basically (but not quite) modern and has been dated to 195k. Genetic coalescence times suggest that this time range could be accurate (however, there are good reasons to suppose that these data don't actually tell us what many researchers think they do).

Cladistically, the origin of a species is defined by an event in which a species branches into two. There is a great amount of disagreement regarding what our sister species was. Homo erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, and Homo neanderthalensis all have supporters. So, maybe there was a split from one of these 200k years ago (of course, we now know that humans later mated with neandertals after maybe a couple hundred thousand years of reproductive isolation from each other).

So, the question is whether the cognitive capabilities of those folks 200ka would have been similar to our own. That's a question that doesn't really have a great answer, but there's not necessarily any reason to suppose that their abilities would have been significantly different from our own. Their brains were similar in size, and near as we can tell, were similar in structure.

20 to 30 thousand years ago, it is basically certain that they were just as smart; note, however, that IQ is very fluid, and is very much something that can be improved through use. They didn't have written language back then, so it's unlikely they would have been "smart" in the same way today's humans can be; they only would have been perfectly capable given the same cultural environment.

Hopefully that helps. Also note that "sapiens" is both singular and plural. "sapien" is improper.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Do Jedi mind tricks work on droids?

The thought occurred to me, that, since many droids seem to be fully sentient, they might be connected to the Force in the same way any living thing is. Can a Jedi influence their artificial minds, or do their mind tricks only work on biological organisms?

Related question: Can droids be force-sensitive?

[Assistant]
Sentience has nothing to do with connecting to the force. Droids are still mechanical, synthetic creations. They have no connection to the force because it requires living things to move, bind and influence. The force is inside ALL living things, from single celled creatures to the largest life forms prowling space. Only a tiny number of the nearly infinite amount of the galaxy's biodiversity is sentient. Droids cannot be jedi, nor can tricks that fool a person's memory and perception affect them.

However, DIFFERENT tricks and manipulation can still affect droids. Physical things, like levitation and telekinesis can still throw them around and, if the jedi is skilled enough, perhaps literally rewire a droid's brain from a distance. To a casual observer, it might look exactly like a mind trick.


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

[User] ELI5: I'm drunk, why can I see clearer when I close one eye?

[Assistant]
Hilarious! But yeah dude, it's because when you're drunk your brain doesn't process any of its inputs (see, taste, smell) very well.

Normally, for you to see stuff, your brain has to go through a complicated process of looking at the picture from each eye and kind of "putting them together" to make a full 3D view of your world.

BUT when you're drunk that is quite a bit too complicated for it, so it does about as good of a job as it does balancing, listening, holding down food, and remembering that you can't dance.


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

[User] ELI5 what do water towers do and how do they work?

[Assistant]
Engineer here!

Water systems are driven by pressure, through either pumps or gravity. In places where there are hills, a RESERVOIR near the top of a hill will spurs the pressure through a water conveyance system to the lowest locations of the water conveyance district. (NYC gets its water from the catskill mountains, about 100 miles north)

In places without many hills, water is pumped to the top of a water tower that will feed the municipality with pressurized water (so it's an artificial hill that water will push down from to allow water to rise up to the second story bathroom of your house)

Water flows through big pipes, then smaller pipes as it branches through the city or town you live in. The water mains in residential streets vary from 4" to 24", or larger. The pipes in the street tend have valves to isolate them, and at the end of each dead end is typically a fire hydrant, both to help put off fires and to drain the water line from stagnant water.

To get to the house, two cocks (lol) are used; they are small valves that isolate your individual house from the main line. These are called curb stops and corporation stops. These can be opened or closed to allow water to flow into the house.

Any other water or storm drain questions?


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

[User]
[DCAU] What are aglets' sinister purpose?

The Question reveals under interrogation by Cadmus that aglets have a sinister purpose. What is this purpose?

[Assistant]
"The plastic tips at the ends of shoelaces are called aglets. Their true purpose is sinister!"

This isn't an answer or an actual fact... but it isn't just a glib delay either!

**It's part of a post-hypnotic string of key-phrases, The Question embedded into his psyche via transcendental meditation, in order to enhance his resistance to interrogation and telepaths.**

The phrases are sufficiently gibberish that he'd never say them by accident... but sufficiently coherent that his interrogators might pause and wonder exactly what you did... "Is there truth to this?  What IS the purpose?" Successfully distracting and diverting them from their original purpose.


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

[User]
[Superman] Why does seeing what might be a bird or a plane cause people in a giant city full of metahumans to freak out?

"Oh my god its a bird in the sky or maybe a plane or maybe that guy who is in the newpapers all the time"

[Assistant]
It's multiple people talking.

Person 1, excitedly: "What's that in the sky?!"
Person 2, dismissively: "It's a bird"
Person 3, dismissively: "It's a plane"
Person 1, excitedly: "No! It's Superman!"

They're excited about seeing Superman. "It's a bird/plane" is people telling the original guy to calm down so they can go about their day.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does flash memory have a limited number of uses? And what happens when they run out?

Flash memory is supposed to have a limited number of write/erase cycles. What happens when they're all used up? Does its capacity start decreasing or does it stop working altogether?

Suppose I have an 8GB flash drive, and I transfer 4GB of music into it. Did I use up hundreds of cycles (one for each file) or just half a cycle?

[Assistant]
You used up exactly half a cycle. A cycle is basically considered as one write to a cell. Technically because you could write over the same cells multiple times without writing over other ones it doesn't work exactly like that but it is close enough.

Each time you write to an individual cell (there can be multiple bits per cell IE MLC flash) the cell wears out a bit. Physically a layer of flash 'captures' electrons going into the cell to record a state. The trick with flash is that the charge is unable to ever leave the circuit. in order to ensure this happens the cell is nearly electrically isolated. This means that that writing the cell takes a large amount of power, and a high voltage and temperature. Reading the cell is physically harmless.

Now what happens in particular as a cell wears out it gets a few failure characteristics. A write to a cell would have a chance of not working. Writing a '1' to a cell might actually leave the cell in a '0' state. The other failure mode is data loss. A failed cell can have conduction to other parts of the chip and loose its energy internally over time. These two errors have different effects but ultimately are the end of life for a flash chip. Now one thing to keep in mind is that the quoted life cycle is basically a guarantee. You won't realistically see any corruption until after you have hit that limit on at least one cell. In some Cases you can double or triple the value for a cell with no problems.

This isn't the end of the story. All electronics are manufactured with a certain percentage of pieces not working. It is not feasible to ensure that every transistor works on a design of 2 billion transistors in a pinky fingernail area. For some devices this means that you choose an operating range that all components work correctly, for others you include redundant parts and choose the ones that work at production - in flash it's a little weirder, they are often connected to chips that manage whether memory is working or not on the fly.

So for an average USB key the primary motivation is cost. The easiest way to minimize cost while maximizing size is called over-provisioning. A typical USB key or memory card is manufactured with two parts on the chip - A small CPU that manages the flash memory and access to it, and the memory itself.

Before shipping the devices are run and figure out what pieces of the flash memory are working by testing it. The chip then keeps that and uses it to determine how it will allocate your data. At the same time it uses a process called 'wear leveling'. It can use wear leveling to help ensure that no individual cell gets worn out before the rest of the device. It also has a second defense against worn out cells - any excess working memory components are brought out when it finds a section of memory doesn't work as well as it should.

TLDR cheap USB keys are miracles of engineering and you only used up one cycle.


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

[User] If put a drone on hover mode within a train, will it remain where it is as the train accelerates?

[Assistant]
This depends entirely on how the drone is keeping its position.

If it has a really really good IMU then it's just measuring its acceleration.  In this case the train will accelerate underneath the drone, so it'll appear to move towards the back of the train.  However, IMUs this accurate aren't common on the drones people tend to have.

If the drone is using GPS, as many of the nicer ones do, then you'll get the same effect, provided that it has enough of a signal to know where it is.

However, if the drone is using a downward-facing camera to stay over one place then it'll accelerate with the train and stay over the same spot within the train.


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

[User] What is a metric of measuring a persons metabolism ?

[Assistant] One way that works quite well is to measure *(or indirectly calculate from something else you can also measure)* the mass of CO2 they exhale over a given duration, which correlates pretty closely to caloric output for aerobic exercise. Any video you might have seen of an athlete running on a treadmill with a big mask with hoses hooked up to them is probably measuring the gas concentrations in their breath for this purpose.


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

[User] [Garfield]Why does Garfield hate Mondays when he doesn't work?

[Assistant] John works.  So starting on a Monday John can't cater to Garfield's needs as much as he normally does on a weekend.  This is extra frustrating as John being a cartoonist works from home so Garfield has to wait for lasagne when John is right there.


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

[User]
ELI5: How can we tell the oceans apart?

I know this seems really strange, but basically since they all eventually touch, like the Atlantic touching the Pacific, the Atlantic touching the Indian Ocean, the Atlantic touching the Arctic Ocean, the Indian Ocean touching the Pacific... what makes them individual bodies of water instead of one mega-ocean?

I know they have a variance of temperatures, under water ecosystems/animals, but is this the only thing stopping them from being a mega-ocean?

[Assistant]
They ARE a single mega-ocean. You have to remember: humans only name and classify things in order to make things convenient for ourselves. There's literally no such thing as "the Atlantic Ocean," as a discrete, specific body of water. It's all in our heads.

It helps us to have names for things, so we can refer to them...but the ocean doesn't care, because it's just a bunch of water. You ask "what makes them individual bodies of water instead of one mega-ocean?" The answer is: we do. Nothing else. It's just humans being human. The parameters might be specific or vague, but they're really just arbitrary, human conventions.


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

[User]
Why does your stomach grumble and hurt when you get hungry?

When I was a child, I was told that it is because the stomach acids are corroding the lining of your stomach. But I figured that that doesn't really make any sense because wouldn't it still be doing the same thing if you were eating?

Also, my parents used to tell me that I would get stomach ulcers if I skip meals a lot. I highly doubt this as well but is there any connection to it at all?

[Assistant] Stomach is empty and may have pockets of air in it. When you are hungry, stomach automatically starts churning but since it only has small amounts of air, it tends to make awkward noises especially when you are sitting next to a girl.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do telephone numbers start with a 0?

I don't know if this is the case for every country around the world, but when I want to call someone, the first digit has to be a 0 if I'm calling someone within the country or 00[telephone code for country] if I'm calling someone abroad.

Bonus question: why can the country codes (0049 for Germany for instance) be replaced by a "+" sign? (Like +49 instead of 0049)

[Assistant]
In the old days, the first "0" indicated that that number was in a different locality - long distance calling. More accurately, the "0" indicates that "this subscription belongs to a different telephone exchange than this one". The second "0" means "Not only does this subscription belong to another exchange, it actually belongs to a different country!".

The reason for this is that old telephone systems were switched electromechanically with relays and such. When you dialed a number, a bunch of relays closed through a number of switchboards. If you started by dialing a "0", the switchboard opened up a connection to a long-distance phone exchange. If the first digit this higher-up exchange received was a second "0", the connection was routed to the international phone exchange. And these "traditions" are carried over to this day!

Pretty neat huh? We're still dealing with legacy from very old tech indeed, this way :)


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

[User] ELI5: What is happening in your brain when you struggle to remember something and it finally comes to you?

[Assistant] The brain recalls things by first filtering out memories that it deems irrelevant, to try to narrow down the remembering process. Sometimes it accidentally filters out what you were trying to remember, so you can get really close but not quite remember that exact thing. After a while, when you focus on something else, the "filter" goes away / resets and if you try to remember it again the brain gets it right that time.


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

[User] ELI5: What is a 'whip' in US congress and what do they do?

[Assistant]
The whip is a very senior role who ensures that the party leadership has the votes to pass their bills.  The job is mostly informal (the whip doesn't have a ceremonial role) with lots of behind the scenes negotiations over favors, election support money, and logrolling and other perks to ensure that the majority leader has the support of their party for their goals.  He also serves as a strategy advisor for the party with lots of information about what's legislatively possible and what isn't.

The first seasons of House of Cards (both the UK and US versions lead character serves as the whip for their party).


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

[User]
Eli5: How does a speedometer work in a car?

Another question would also be whats the difference between wheel speed and vehicle speed?

[Assistant] There is either a mechanical cable or an electric counting wheel on the transmission output, calibrated to the wheel size the factory installed. As the wheels spin the sensor counts the amount of times it passes and does the math for you. A mechanical cable uses a gear drive calibrated in a similar way and just spins which holds the needle at the corresponding speed on the gauge.


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

[User]
CMV: whoever leaks the Mueller report or Trump's IRS filings would be committing career suicide and going to prison, but would become national hero(es) by letting the American people know what they deserve to know.

>"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."

- Mark Twain

Anyone who does not expect and demand scrutiny of the government are not patriotic. The biggest patriots to the USA are the ones who shine a light, even at great personal risk, on the parts powerful people want kept dark, probably because they have something terrible to hide. To deflect such scrutiny is not patriotic, and is only the work of stooges in an unjust system or blind followers in a cult.

The topic is obviously partisan but that's part of the problem: issues of law abidance are partisan nowadays. It should never be a partisan question. Love Trump or hate him he should not be above the law. If you are willing to rationalize why or how Trump does not deserve the same scrutiny as anyone else in his position, then you are part of the problem because he obviously owes us that. Anyone in power does.

And when we make the law a partisan issue, we all lose, because it shows that power is more important than playing fair. When people see those in power as illegitimate, social stability is the victim: why do I have to follow the rules if the guy with power and money doesn't have to? For those who take the cynical view that it has always been that way, then they are simply admitting America is not a meritocracy.

But should be.

And those who really love this country and its principles are those who make that so, by divulging what the powerful want hidden, no matter how large the personal sacrifice. Which makes them the greatest kind of national hero, by definition.

[Assistant]
Have you considered the question of admissibility of evidence?

Suppose there is evidence contained in the report / returns that could lead to criminal charges. To make those charges stick, there needs to be a proper court process, where defending lawyers have an opportunity to review prosecution's evidence. Admissibility of evidence needs to be discussed, and decided in closed court hearings.

Now, suppose the report / returns are leaked. One consequence is that some inadmissible evidence is now known to the public, and will sway any potential jury. It provides additional avenues for the defense to argue for delays, and makes it harder for the prosecution to convict the guilty.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does every country have a flag?

Every country has a flag, areas within countries have their own flags, groups of countries sometimes have a flag... How did the human tradition of representing areas and groups of people by using colors on a piece of cloth start?

[Assistant]
It started in antiquity with military units. You had battle standards that designated specific armies and could even be used to signal for specific attacks or types of retreat.

The tradition shifted to represent specific nobles when we entered feudal periods in society and then countries when we entered the Nation State periods of society. They also became very important when we began sailing ships as they identified the nationality of a vessel at a distance.


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

[User] [God of War] What would Kratos think about modern firearms?

[Assistant]
He isn't the type to be caught up on ideas of "non-cowardly killings"- he's happy to use whatever methods work to destroy his enemies.

He'd consider them the same as any other weapon- useful if they would kill his enemies, useless if not.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Why aren't there any colonies in Hyperspace?

As far as I can tell Hyperspace is some kinda trippy alternate universe thing. Why don''t they just put some colonies there? Why don't we see any signs of civilization or life there?

[Assistant]
Hyperspace is, in so few words, unstable. The speed of light isn't a barrier there, which means that (thanks to some math that works out with relativity laws), causality doesn't really apply in the same way. There are no stars, no planets, no stellar bodies, and certainly no lifeforms to speak of. In fact, the only matter that seems to exist in Hyperspace are highly charged, faster-than-light particles called Hypermatter. While gravity from realspace can alter the geometry of Hyperspace (hence why navicomputers are so important - running into a star can still kill you, even in a barren parallel dimension), it's not enough for the hypermatter to form into structures.

Really, only two things keep hyperspace travel from being absolutely, insanely dangerous: The fact that Hyperspace can be mapped, one-to-one, with realspace, and that by some quirk of the intersection of physics between real- and hyperspace, along with a ship's onboard passive shielding, Real-matter remains stable in the storm of geometry that is Hyperspace.

To answer your second question, there's just not that much to be gained from building colonies *in* hyperspace. Anything we need to learn can be done through studies on traveling ships for a fraction of the costs, and far less risk.

That being said, it could be that there are things about Hyperspace we may just never understand. Starships *do* go missing every once in a while, and though most of them are likely just stranded somewhere in the interstellar void (A death sentence, if there ever was one - the distances involved make rescue an impossibility) stranger things have been known to happen.  Along backwater starlanes, and sometimes even crowded trade routes, a few pilots a year enter a jump and never come out the other end.

Some spacers will tell you they came out in the right place, but the wrong time. That ghost ships, Sith dreadnoughts not seen since the Great Hyperspace war, or stranger things, truly alien craft invisible on sensors even as they drift across your view before vanishing without so much as a flicker, are the byproduct of a capricious, impossible universe, right next to our own.

Probably just stories, though.


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

[User] [Superman] Does Clark Kent have an unremarkable career in journalism on purpose so he doesn't stand out too much?

[Assistant]
Clark actually has a pretty remarkable career in journalism, he just gets overshadowed by being married to / working with Lois, who is a more successful and more flamboyant journalist.

This helps his disguise in the opposite way of what youre thinking. If no one could name an article Clark wrote and he never made any accomplishments or got any accolades, someone might wonder what hes doing all the time, but with him seemingly being a busy, successful reporter, thats one more reason he couldnt possibly be moonlighting as Superman.


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

[User] [Star Wars] Killing sand people is rough and all, but what's the evilest thing Darth Vader ever did?

[Assistant]
Let's not forget casually choking every imperial officer that fails him to death, that's not pleasant.

in the comics he drowns a whole town just to cause a distraction to a Jedi who he was hunting for lightsaber.

he hunts down an escaped Jedi, who had gone on to make a nice, force-free life for himself in hiding, kills him in front of his own children and his wife for good measure.

after brutally torturing Leia in the death star he rewards her with a present, a hunk of rock, a souvenir of all that was left of Alderaan. Not as brutal as he can be, nor is it a huge display of force power, but super savage nonetheless.

returns to tattoine later in life as Vader and just for kicks slaughters a bunch of sandpeople again.

turns two stormstroopers' heads 180 degrees with the force all because they caught a glimpse of him without a helmet completely by accident. Hell, one of them was mid-apology and trying to help him.

Force chokes and puppeteers a ruler of a planet that recently come under Imperial rule. in front of the ruler's family and other planet officials, because the guy said it was custom for people to dance on this particular occasion. Yes the dude was being a dick and oddly insistent that Vader dance, but it was pretty extreme. He was also concerned the people of this planet weren't yet certain who was actually in charge now.

in the legends run he decides factory workers constructing AT-ATs that they are working too slow. To motivate them he informs him that at the end of each work day and kill the least productive worker. To motivate them. Constructions ends in record time but with fewer workers.

Also in legends he throws an aspiring and hard working imperial officer off a balcony on Coruscant because Palpatine hints he worked as well as Vader, and Vader didn't suffer potential rivals. He made that same officer beat several prisoners to death with a rod to save the power pack in his blaster.


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

[User]
Existential Crisis in CS

Hello!

I am a sophomore CS student. I feel like I don't know what I am studying. I don't understand why I am doing web development when I don't understand how the web works, why am I solving algorithmic problems when I don't know what's happening inside the computer.  I feel like things are way too abstract and I want to have a deeper understanding of how everything work. But that ain't gonna give me a job! Nobody cares if you know how things work all they care about is whether you have an ML project, and can invert a binary tree. Am I just overthinking? I don't understand what to do please help.

[Assistant]
stay calm and carry on.

Literally everyone has been in your shoes at some point. Learning complex topics takes time and effort. Stay patient, stay motivated, and understanding and success will follow.


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

[User]
ELI5: In Formula 1, why aren't all the drivers given the same car to test who is the fastest?

Even if its only done as an exhibition race, that would be a far better way to determine the best driver given how different each team's cars are.

[Assistant]
F1 runs two simultaneous championships: The World Driver's Championship, and the Constructor's Championship. The driver's race is obvious - he with the most points wins. The Constructor's championship is awarded to the *team* with the most successful car.

Each team builds a car, and runs two of those cars with two different drivers. This means each team has to design the best car they can within the rules, and each team pushes the rules as best they can. Whether or not this makes for good racing is a matter of opinion, but the idea is to get teams to innovate as much as they can.

This is how you get things like the Mercedes turbo units, which are moved away from the engine and pull much cooler air, generating more horsepower and less heat. It also means you tend to get staggered finishes by manufacturer...

NASCAR, on the other hand, races almost the same car. They're manufactured by different companies, but they're all building to a stock spec. If you're looking for road racing, rather than ovals, you might look at F1's feeder series, GP2. GP2 teams all race the same engine, chassis and tires, so it's a much better measure of driver quality.


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

[User] What specific evidence is there that ADHD is an actual disorder, and not just the overhyped treatment of normal human behaviors?

[Assistant] When the behaviour is uncontrollable and interferes with the individual's life, it's a disorder.  Anxiety, Depression, etc are all normal human emotions/behaviours, but when they become uncontrollable and impairing we call them disorders.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Would the Star Destroyer have fired on the escape pod if life forms had been detected?

In A New Hope, a life form is launched, and gunners are ordered to hold their fire when no life forms are detected.  As other people have suggested, if they suspected droids on board, they could have easily found them.  They did track them to the Jawas and then to Mos Eisley fairly quickly, so they weren't incompetent.  If their goal was to make sure they got the plans back, it makes sense not to fire.

If they had detected life forms, would they have fired then?  If they wanted the plans back, they would have needed to keep the pod unexploded anyway, and retrieve the crew instead of the droids.  Why would they give the order to hold fire then?  Or are gunners just trigger happy and the officer wanted to be sure?

[Assistant]
Report of Officer TRV-4357:

During the capture of the *Tantive IV* and the arrest of its crew, the ship launched an escape pod towards the planet Tatooine. A common tactic for smugglers under arrest will be to flee via escape pod, and as such we were prepared to fire upon them to prevent the criminal's escape. However, smugglers aware of this practice will fire one or more empty escape pods, in an effort to distract our gunners, or at the very least make it difficult to redirect fire to the later pods. As such, Imperial regulations state to scan for lifeforms aboard an escape pod, and to only fire if lifeforms are detected. This greatly reduces the odds of gunners missing an occupied pod and allowing a smuggler to escape. As such, smugglers are more likely to surrender and reveal their suppliers and customers, as their feeble attempts at escape will likely result in being disintegrated by the ship's batteries.


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

[User]
[Climate]Why are tornadoes so rare in Europe, but almost "common" in North America (US in particular)?

 Tornadoes are rare in Europe, so two tornadoes (Luxembourg and  Amsterdam) on the same day is even rarer. In the US, while we don't have  tornadoes everyday, we have them often enough, usually over 1000 a  year. Why do we have so many. Even Canada has only \~6% of the number than the US recieves? (no data on Mexico) Entire continents have fewer per year than  the US racks up. Shouldn't Asia and Europe have their own Tornado  Alleys?

[Assistant]
One reason is that he large open plains of the central US allow the cold arctic air to mix with the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and create a lot of turbulence. Im pretty sure they are more likely to form and grow where the ground is flat and cant disrupt the formation like a mountain would.
They do form almost everywhere but its just more common in the US area.
Id imagine South America gets a lot of tornados as well with areas where there is tropic weather and arctic cold.


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

[User] [Lord of the Rings] Gandalf has fireworks and from this i'm assuming he understands basic projectile explosions, why didn't he make a type of mortar bomb or use the dragon firework as deception in battles?

[Assistant]
Firstly, fireworks are cheap tricks a conjurer would use to entertain Hobbits. They aren't weapons to be used in war.

Secondly, the technology used to make mortar bombs doesn't really exist in Middle Earth.

Lastly, Gandalf doesn't need fireworks or mortar bombs. He's a demi-god of reasonable power, but he's severely restricted in what he's allowed to do in Middle Earth. He could probably nuke Sauron's army, but his mission is to rally and inspire the people of Middle Earth so that they can win their battles, not to go out and win it for them.


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

[User]
Does any indigenous antarctic life still exist?

From what I understand there has been a significant period of time from the point when Antarctica separated from the other landmasses to the point when glaciation made it largely uninhabitable. Enough time for evolution to create distinct Antarctic species.
Do we know if any species that spent part of their evolutionary history exclusively in post-separation Antarctica still exist today?

[Assistant]
A bunch actually. Non-flying birds including the Emperor and Adelie penguins are found only on the antarctic coasts. 3/ species of mammals, the Leopard seal, Ross seal, and Crabeater Seal. There are a few other species of seals but those have a greater range that extends out of the continent. And also one species of insect, *Belgica* antarctica which lives in a very specific part of the continent.

There are also bacteria adapted to live in now, and a bunch of fish and marine invertebrate that don't go too far from the continent if you want to include surrounding waters.


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

[User] ELI5 How do partial birth or late term abortions actually work?

[Assistant]
A "partial birth abortion" is a type of late-term abortions, but not all late-term abortions are partial-birth.

A partial-birth abortion is properly called an "intact dilation and extraction" abortion procedure; it involves a partial delivery of the (almost universally non-viable) fetus. The cervix is dilated, a feticide is usually used to terminate the fetus, and then the fetus is extracted intact through the vagina.

The reason this is done *usually* has to do with a desire to keep the fetus intact, typically for grieving purposes. It's usually done in response to a miscarriage in which the fetus has died but has not been expelled, when the baby will be born with significant developmental defects, or when the fetus is threatening the life of the mother.

You will occasionally hear reference to "scissors through the back of the neck." That does not happen often, if ever. The only time I've ever heard of it happening was in connection with someone who was committing horrific malpractice (of which "scissors through the back of the fetus's neck" abortions were only *part*) and who is currently in jail for doing so.


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

[User] [Monsters Inc.] What does the Scream Extractor do? How does it extract screams?

[Assistant]
I would posit that the sound of scream (or laughter) is the power source. With existing door technology, it can only extract sound waves that come in contact with it, so quite a bit is lost.

Since the Scream Extractor completely covers the victims mouth, 100% of generated sound waves is collected.


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

[User]
[LoTR] What happened to the rings of the dwarfs?

were they lost long ago?  are they hidden?  did sauron possess them, and if so are they in the rubble of barad-dur?

[Assistant] Dwarvish hardiness prevented them from succumbing to Saurons influence as was his will.  However their greed for gold and jewels was inflamed by possessing the rings and ultimately lead to their downfall.  Thrin II for instance quarried a great horde of treasure in the caverns of Erebor, the lonely mountain which ultimately brought the attentions of Smaug.  His ring, along with two others was reacquired by Sauron for purposes unknown.  According to Gandalf the other were destroyed by the dragons.


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

[User]
This seems appropriate for finals.  What, exactly, is mental fatigue?  Why does otherwise simple material become flimsy and difficult after hours of study?

Why is it so much more difficult to understand something after studying the subject for a while?  What, physiologically, is occurring?  Stunted synapses?  What fuel, if any, is being used?  My brain hurts...

[Assistant]
Lots of reasons.

Metabolite build up at synapses over time. (Though this is lack of sleep more than anything else, one molecule that builds up is adenosine which inhibits learning. Caffeiene is actually an adenosine receptor antagonist which helps overcome this.)

Another answer is that learning is actually somewhat refractory. There is evidence that spacing learning out, even with something like breaks, helps increase learning. There may be some molecule that is used up and refreshed on this time scale. (I actually partially study this phenomena.)

Another answer (as to why material gets harder and then you feel much better after sleeping) is that the memory hasn't had time to associate with other similar memories. This means that if you are learning facts which are interconnected, the earlier facts haven't had time (REM sleep) to connect in your cortex to related memories and become more comprehensible. Trying to add in new memories when older memories haven't been placed in a proper frame work makes the new memories even harder to figure out.

Another reason is interference. This is more common when studying several related subjects. Basically as you learn (without sleeping) new memories that are similar to your slightly less new memories (not stored safely in their own very distinct networks, because you didn't sleep) interfere with storage and make it harder to learn both sets of facts.

In summary, drink caffeine, take breaks, don't study two similar subjects, and get proper sleep/don't cram and studying will become easier.

(I can provide citations if you'd like to know more, or think something isn't on the level.)


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

[User] ELI5: How do people on drugs, such as meth, supposedly get superhuman strength, taking multiple people to subdue them etc?

[Assistant]
People are generally stronger than we think. We have built-in safety margins, like the warning line in a pressure valve, so that we don't accidentally injure ourselves... these safety margins are often very cautious, preventing us from exerting anything like our full possible force (except for in emergencies, where things like adrenaline shut down some of the safety mechanisms).

Some drugs either directly shut down the mechanisms (by triggering or emulating surges of the relevant hormones), or otherwise prevent us from being aware of them.

A big part of these mechanisms is pain responses. Drugs often significantly mute pain.

So, you have a person who is unaware of pain and is being as frantically strong as people can be in a severe panicked emergency, versus people who are still very aware of their own pain and perceived limits (and who are often trying to not severely injure the target).

So, it's not that the person has _extra_ strength from somewhere, it's that a person who has had all the limits taken off, against people who are still severely limited in multiple ways, _appears_ superhuman.


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

[User]
[DC] So why DOES Kryptonite harm Superman? And why does it come in such a wide range of colors?

His Fortress of Solitude or his spacepod don't hurt him, even though they're presumably made from Kryptonian materials. Other meteorites don't seem to do anything, even extrasolar meteorites. What is it about the specific nature of Krypton or the circumstances of its destruction that caused it to, a) glow in a variety of colors and b) have such a range of effects on Kryptonians and, for the most part, only Kryptonians?

[Assistant]
It should be noted Superman isnt inherently strong nor have powers.   He gets his strength and powers primarily from our yellow son and (in certain canon) Earth's atmosphere.   If he were on the planet Kryton, with their red sun, he'd be just as average as anyone here on Earth.  (no one on Krypton has super strength, nor can fly, nor have heat vision, etc)

Green kryptonite pieces are radioactive portions of Krypton which radiate that "natural" Kryptonian effect onto him and undoes the benefits he gets from our sun and atmosphere.  The destruction of Krypton, IIRC, is what makes it radioactive.  Other pieces of kryptonite we see are pre-destruction, or pieces that did not become radioactive (and thus isn't green).  In smaller doses as we most often see, t's not so much that it hurts him, as it brings him down to a level he's not accustomed to.  Granted, in large quantities and because it IS radioactive, it could potentially kill him.  Keep in mind, he's never really lived on Krypton.  He was shipped off right after birth.  The only environment he knows is Earth's.  His body grew up acclimated to it.  That said, Kryptonite has much stronger affect on him that it would say, Zod, or someone who lived for many years on Krypton.


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

[User]
eli5: why does the sea not sink through the sand?

Or how deep do you have to dig on the bottom of the ocean before you reach dry sand?

[Assistant] You get sand when water (or wind, but that isn't relevant here) whips rock into pieces. Under the sand, where water hasn't been able to whip it out of shape, is just rock. Water doesn't quite seep through rock.


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

[User] [Comics] Given the technology of facial recognition and DNA analysis, could a working superhero maintain a secret identity?

[Assistant] No. First, their height and weight could easily be recognized. Furthermore, their voice could be recorded and weighed against other media. Third, there is psychological profiling used to narrow down serial killers that would identify them. Fourth, law enforcement could "map" sitings and recordings of them as they travel from their home to crime scenes. If Spiderman is always seen on Elm Street on the way to a crime, then seen again on Elm Street coming back from the crime, then the police are going to figure out that he lives near Elm. Then, there is stuff that you mentioned, like DNA and facial analysis. DNA might be hard to get ahold of, and the facial analysis could be partially thrown if the hero were wearing a full mask, but someone like Superman would have no chance.


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

[User]
How relevant is Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations today?

Is this something still taught in universities? Are his principles still relevant today? I will admit that I have never read it but Id like to.

[Assistant]
>How relevant is Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations today?

It's not.

>Is this something still taught in universities?

Probably not, unless he's mentioned in an History of Economic Thought class.

>Are his principles still relevant today?

He describes some basic phenomena, and in some things he was closer to being right than being wrong, but in other ways he was wrong. Put it this way, you're not missing out if you never read his book.

The audiobook is on youtube if you don't feel like reading it, but I'd limit it to idle recreation rather than rigorous examination.

There's really not much you can learn from reading people who died a couple hundred years ago. They didn't have the tools, quantity of data, or quality of data that we have today. While in some ways that makes the genuine breakthroughs even more impressive, it means in many ways they were just guessing.