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

[User]
[South Park] Kennys Powers

If Kennys mother were to die would Kenny cease to be immortal?

[Assistant]
Itd depend on the nature of the enchantment.  If the spell was originally cast on Kenny himself (or rather, his unborn form/soul,) then its likely that the next motherly figure for Kenny would likely be the next host (his dads new girlfriend or even possibly one of the other boys mom.)

Whats more likely, considering the eldritch source of Kennys power, is that the enchantment grants his mom and dad both a form of immortality (or at least a greatly extended lifespan,) since Kenny is very much a product of both his mother and father.  They probably arent unkillable, so the death of either spells the end for Kenny too.  But it doesnt benefit Cthulhu or his cult very much for the progenitors of one of his clearly most important agents to live and die in the blink of a Great Old Ones eye.  Especially with the particularly unhealthy lifestyle that Kennys mom and dad have, and yet the two dont seem any real worse for the wear.


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

[User]
ELI5 - Why do computer memory systems use 1024 not 1000?

Is it something to do with Base 8 Numbers (8/64/1024) not Base 10 (10/100/1000)?

Also why is it 1024MB to 1GB, but 1000GB to 1TB?

[Assistant]
> Is it something to do with Base 8 Numbers (8/64/1024) not Base 10 (10/100/1000)?

Almost there. Computers don't use base 8 they use binary, ones or zeroes. It is (2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024) as you increase in binary digit places.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40k] I'm a fish-out-of-water time traveler in the 41st Millennium - what should I do?

Due to warp-related fuckery I've been plucked out of the 21st Century and dropped into the grimdarkness of the far future. What's the best I can do in this situation?

[Assistant] Depending on your location, Citizen, find a skill that makes you valuable to the most important person nearby, and integrate into society. It will be difficult, but if you are lucky and skilled, you will do well enough to survive and live the equivalent of a low-class lifestyle. If you are on a chaos world, your best chance at survival is ruthlessness. You live among animals and rabid dogs, act accordingly, and pray that the Emperor takes mercy on your soul.


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

[User]
Is it possible to program an unbeatable chess algorithm?

Essentially, is it possible to construct an algorithm that can always beat an opponent, and does the answer depend on if the computing power is unlimited or not?

[Assistant]
There is an algorithm, but it requires monstrous computational resources. Chess is a zero-sum, deterministic, two player, perfect information (i.e no hidden moves/partial observability)  game (or a Markov Game if you prefer). You can use the minmax algorithm to solve such games. The minmax algorithm is an implementation of the minmax Solution Concept for 2-player games of perfect information. Effectively, you are continuously trying to "imagine" non-losing futures, while at the same time assuming that your opponent will chose the worst possible move for you.

In theory one could possibly solve the game once (using minmax), and keep a huge database for all positions, alongside the ``value'' of each position. You can do that in Tic-tac-toe.

In practice the state space of chess is massive, which limits the depth of the search tree. Thus, usually, from each state in the game, the minmax algorithm is run, but it terminates prematurely after some "imagined moves" (``plies'').  There is an evaluation function at each state, which will basically tell you how good that state is even if it is not an endgame (either through a database or learned using evolution/reinforcement learning)

Because the evaluation functions we have for Chess are superhuman, Game A.I research has moved to GO (for games of perfect information) and poker (for games of imperfect information)

IAMA Game A.I. Ph.d Student

EDIT - spelling

EDIT 2 - Beating your opponent means not losing.  Actively trying to win (through for example modelling your opponent) is actually harder for machines.


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

[User]
Why is a small (i.e.1 or 2K) temperature difference so much more noticeable to us in water than air?

A 1 or 2K different is very noticeable in water (a swimming pool for example) whereas in air not so much. Is it a question of state difference, specific heat capacity?

[Assistant] It is a matter of heat transfer. Specifically the heat transfer coefficient. Compare the coefficients of the two and you will see that your body (mostly fluid water) transfers heat energy more effectively through fluid rather than air.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why is Jailbreaking an iPhone so difficult?

Couldn't a tethered device like a computer just erase everything on your phone's boot drive and then re-add the software with the tweaks? Why can't developers build their own operating systems and add them to an iPhone once everything is erased?

[Assistant]
On any computer, whether that be a mobile device like an iPhone or a traditional desktop computer, you can only easily write to the hard drive by using the operating system - by telling the operating system what to write onto the hard drive.

> Couldn't a tethered device like a computer just erase everything on your phone's boot drive and then re-add the software

Even when tethered, the computer can't just write to this portion of the storage. Tethering means that the computer is plugged into the phone - and this means the computer can talk to the phone's operating system. But it still needs to request that the operating system make any changes to the storage.

The iPhone's operating system doesn't allow for the boot sector to be overwritten except in very specific circumstances. Jailbreaking basically involves tricking it into thinking that these circumstances have been met.


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

[User]
ELI5: How come Pepsi can sell a 1liter pop at my store for only .99, a 20 ounce for 1.72 and two 2liters for 2.22 sale.

This always confused me how a small bottle of pop, generally from a pop machine or a gas station, costs almost $2, whereas a 1liter of pop sold at my Shopko sells for $.99, and then at Caseys they can have deals where you can get two 2liters for $2.22. Don't they lose money if they put lower prices on higher costs, or is it that they determine more people are willing to buy the easier to access / drink?

[Assistant]
The smaller bottles are usually more convenient for people, so they attract a higher price than they would if it was just based on content. On top of that, most small bottles are chilled, which is both an extra cost and an extra convenience so the price goes up more.

Larger bottles are normally stored on a regular shelf, and the product itself is dirt cheap, so there's no real loss to selling large amounts at low prices.


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

[User] What is the difference between general and special relativity?

[Assistant] It's the difference between a map of your city and a globe of the world. One is nice and flat and only relevant to your immediate vicinity, geometry is easy, the other is curved and relevant to everything, but the geometry is a bit harder. Particularly, General Relativity tells us how energy and mass affect the larger shape of spacetime.


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

[User] [Matrix] Why was the simulation set in a time when the internet was conceivable? Wouldn't it have been easier to simulate medieval times?

[Assistant]
Computers never experienced medieval times. Nor did they any time before the first "true" computers came to be. Historical documents are hard to turn into "perfectly" accurate representations.

The early 21st century was a perfect setting for them because they knew the most about it; mass media, social media, and a seemingly endless plethora of demographic data and seemingly innocuous accounts of normal life were at the Machines' proverbial fingertips.

Computers are efficient, so they went with the most "bang-for-your-buck" option.


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

[User] How do Saturn's rings spin in relation to the planet's spin?

[Assistant] Saturns rings orbit at the orbital velocity of their altitude, between 24000 m/s at the innermost rings to 1470 m/s at the outer edge. The equatorial rotational speed is about 9600 m/s, which is much slower than surface orbital velocity (as expected, otherwise the planet would fly apart).


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

[User]
[Marvel] What Happens To Doctor Strange If He Gets Hurt In The Astral Plane?

If Doctor Strange's astral form is harmed does the injury mirror on his real body? And what happens should he die in the Astral Plane?

[Assistant]
Subtle difference.

He can't be injured in astral form, but he can be weakened.

The astral form is pure energy, so no physical harm can come to it, but it can be weakened.  Bad analogy = you can't damage a camp fire, but you can pour sand on it to make it smaller and weaker and eventually extinguish it.

If the astral form is destroyed, the body has no soul.  It could be kept alive by a respirator.


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

[User]
[General] Why are "old gods" seemingly so much more evil?

Lovecraftian gods, or the titans in greek mythology. Actually maybe the idols in islamic stories too. Don't get me wrong, greek gods like Zeus are assholes too, but they don't seem to want to destroy the world at least. I assume older gods lose power due to a drop in worshippers, but what causes that?

[Assistant]
The new gods are closer to men, they have the passions and fears of mankind, they know courage and succumb to envy.  Though they may be capricious and cruel, they do so for reasons we can understand, and even prepare for.  They can be appeased by sacrifices or sated by having eaten their fill.  It may be that they draw power from worship, or it may just be that their godly egos love being worshipped so much they prefer men existing to not existing.

The old gods want none of that.  *Feel* none of that.  Most don't even know mankind exists, and the ones that do consider us a curiosity at best.  This is the best known trait of Lovecraftian gods, whose Eldritch power is so vast it could annihilate us with a thought, and whose motivations simply do not involve considering men.  If we are harmed by them, it is by accident; there is nothing we've done to provoke them, and there is nothing we can do to appease them.


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

[User] ELI5: Why are the letters x, y and z used for representing points in a coordinate system?

[Assistant] Rene Descartes started using those letters to represent unknown coordinates in his maths book 'La Geometrie' and everybody else followed the convention from there. Same reason as that the ratio between circumference and diameter uses the  symbol - Euler started doing it and it got popular from there.


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

[User] Why isn't Liechtenstein a member of the World Health Organization?

[Assistant] **It's expensive, Liechtenstein is small and they do not have to because of the Swiss** --- Liechtenstein has a population of about 36,000 making it a micro-state although it is a fairly wealthy country they may have chosen not to participate due to the expense involved in being a member of the World Health Organization. Liechtenstein also cooperates with Switzerland diplomatically and Switzerland "safeguards" the interests of Liechtenstein when they are not present or represented.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does running sometimes make you nauseous?

[Assistant]
It activates your sympathetic nervous system (activates squelettal muscles, dialates pupils and bronchioles) while supressing your parasympathetic nervous system (supresses digestive system, among otuer things).

While you run this system change also changes where the blood flow is prioritized. So prioritize your muscles rather than your stomach. If you have food in your stomach and your system is no longer prioritizing digestion you may feel nausious because your body is redirecting its resources.

This is simplified.


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

[User]
What's the best way to attain basic understanding of social sciences without taking it up as an academic study?

I've been fascinated by snippets of social science through politics, shows like The Wire, concepts in film and literature, etcetera. But I've never taken social science/humanity subjects for A level, like most of my friends have. I'm reading through Bourdieu's Forms of Capital essay and I was wondering if there's some sort of recommended reading list, or a social science 101 rundown with topics. Sorry if wrong subreddit.

[Assistant]
It sounds like your interested in Sociology, which is one of many social sciences, given your reading of Bourdieu.

What sorts of things are you interested in? Research books and journal articles? Classical theory? Contemporary theory?

There are many topics available for exploration to sociologists. Are you interested in gender and sexuality? Race? Stratification? Class? Poverty? Education? Religion?

Any good reading list will include at least *The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism* by Max Weber, *Capital* (Save this one for when you're pretty comfortable reading heavy texts, maybe start with *The Grundrisse*) by Karl Marx, *Rules of the Sociological Method* by Emile Durkheim, *The Sociological Imagination* by C. Wright Mills, and *Distinction* by Pierre Bourdieu.

To me, that's a good spread of sociological work. Sometimes, books will lack context or the things and ideas they put forth will not make sense. If that is the case, you can always ask on this sub and someone will clarify or provide context.


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

[User] [BATMAN] Which villian, if they died, would create the biggeat powwr vacuum, and/or create the biggest gang war?

[Assistant]
Not in Gotham, but when Ra's Al Ghul seemed to have actually died permanently, the League of Assassins went through a long period of being pulled apart to become loyal to different villains who seized or attempt to seize control of it (Nyssa, Deathstroke, Lady Shiva, Talia). A faction even thought Cassandra Cain was their murder messiah and tried to get her to take them in.

Generally speaking though, the henchmen and footsoldiers in Gotham are already dispersed across a big pool, and any one villain, super or otherwise, disappearing wouldn't be a significant sea change, cause their people would be happy to join up with another crew.

In the 'War Games' story event, a massive power vacuum and gang war of an unprecedented scale occurs, but only after all of the city's major gang leaders are murdered in a single night.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why can't planes have large parachutes attached to them, so if something goes wrong, they can pull the chutes and be lowered down softly?

Edit: "they" meaning the pilots

Edit2: So apparently this is a thing for smaller things, but **why isn't this done for larger passenger planes?**

[Assistant]
First of all, if a plane has major issues while in flight, the shape of the plane still allows for a large glide ratio, meaning that as long as the plane maintains its shape (which seems like a necessary component for any parachute mechanism) it will continue moving forward, rather than going into a nosedive.  If that's the case, the plane can do just fine without additional help and glide into a landing area, rather than just falling.

Another thing to consider is that few accidents occur during the "cruising" portion of the flight.  It's much more likely for crashes to occur during takeoffs and landings.  During those portions of the flight, the aircraft is too low for parachutes to make much of a difference.

In other words, having a parachute wouldn't actually solve any of the problems that are associated with typical airplane malfunctions.


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

[User]
ELI5: How does Kroger (and other large grocery chains) make all of its generic brand food?

Kroger has a generic branded version of pretty much everything in their store. How do they make all of it? There are different recipes, molds, and entirely different production processes for most of this stuff. Do they buy each product off of someone else and put on their own packaging, or do they really make it all themselves? (And if so, where are all these factories?)

[Assistant]
Many of Kroger brands are made in the same factory as the other more expensive brands. The cheaper price comes from a combination of buying direct form the manufacturer and not as high quality ingredients or parts.
Also a lot of time you are paying a premium for the well known that has nothing to do with the quality of the product.
Edited for spelling.


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

[User]
ELI5: why is the Atlantic Ocean in South Carolina dark green while it's clear blue in South Florida?

Is it a gradual change? Could anything be done to clear up the green water? Is it only a matter of time before its dark green in south Florida? Was it once clear blue up the entire east coast?

[Assistant] The little bitty plant life that makes the water appear green thrives better in cooler water.  The closer you get to the equator, the warmer the surface water is, so there's less of that plant life turning the water green near the surface which makes it appears clearer, especially in the shallower water near the shore.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why does China care so much about Taiwan? Aren't there more productive uses of national power and influence?

Taiwan is a tiny island that is over half a century separated from the mainland. Reunification will not grant the government any significant degree of military or economic power, and the Taiwanese government no longer claims to be the legitimate successor to the ROC or to have any ambitions of ruling the mainland.

Why does the PRC still care? Or at least, why so much?

[Assistant]
> Reunification will not grant the government any significant degree of military or **economic power**

Taiwan is a fairly significant economic force. Their up there with Korea when it comes to the manufacturing of highly advanced electronics (think CPU's). That reason alone is enough for China to be interested in Taiwan.


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

[User]
ELI5: why weed gives you 'the munchies'

Don't usually smoke the whacky bacci but last night I had a bit and ate a large McDonalds 1/4 pounder meal 2 cheese burgers 9 chicken nuggets and a bowl of cereal when usually I'd be feeling sick after eating the meal on its own!

[Assistant] Cannabis contains substances known as cannabanoids. There are types that come from plants like cannabis, and types that occur naturally in your brain. The types that are usually in your brain when you don't smoke help regulate hunger: they send signals that tell the brain, "hey, the body needs food!" When your stomach is full of food, cannabanoids are not used by the brain in this way. This is changed when you ingest or inhale cannabanoids from cannabis: the brain thinks these are natural signallers telling it that the body needs food, even if it doesn't.


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

[User]
In the LHC, two protons are smashed into one another to release fundamental particles. Why do they not smash two electrons or two neutrons or a proton and a neutron in hopes of finding different results or different particles?

Edit:  Thanks!  That was very educational!

[Assistant] There are different reasons to use different particles. The precursor to the LHC collided electrons and positrons together. Electron collisions generally give a cleaner signal than protons but it is a challenge to get them to higher energies because they lose more energy as they rotate around the ring. Neutrons are not good for colliding fast because you can't accelerate them with electric fields, but they are used in material physics, where they are scattered through solids to measure the structural and magnetic properties. There are also experiments on neutrons themselves, but they are ideally done at very low energy. Neutron facilities are typically built next to nuclear reactors.


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

[User]
Should a house fan blow in or out for maximum efficiency?

I live in a two-storey townhouse with central air. If I was to use a window fan to cool the house at night, would it would better to have it in an upstairs window blowing cool air in or hot air out?

[Assistant]
I've tested this scenario, and if the outside air at night is very cool, it's definitely more efficient to open up every single window in the house, open up all interior doors, and then point a single fan blowing outwards from an upstairs window with the direction of the wind.  The negative pressure produced will suck in air from every single window and you will feel cool in every room immediately.

If you try to blow cool air into the house, it will only cool one room and the coolness will very slowly work its way inside.  However, it will take the path of least resistance and you'll find pockets of trapped hot air throughout the house.


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

[User] ELI5: What is spaghetti code ?

[Assistant]
"Reading a book" is good code.  There's an obvious start, an obvious finish, and a clear path between them.

Spaghetti code is also reading a book, except:

* Each of the main characters was introduced in a different book, each by a different author.  Nothing says which book each character was introduced in.
* When you open the book, the first chapter is Chapter 4.  Chapter 1 is actually partway through the book, and then Chapter 2 is in a magazine on the bookshelf, then Chapter 3 is near the end of the book.
* The plot is never explained; the author simply assumes that you know what the plot is.

It would be technically possible to read the spaghetti code book, sure!  The problem is *making sense* out of it.


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

[User] ELI5: Who "officially" keeps track of Bitcoin's value? How is it decided?

[Assistant] There is no "official" bitcoin price. There are lot of separate bitcoin marketlplaces (or bitcoin exchanges to be more precise) like Bitstamp for example. The price within one marketplace is decided by the buyers and sellers. If more people want to buy, the price goes up, and if more people want to sell, then it goes down. When you read somewhere that the bitcoin price is X, they usually either use the price in one of the bitcoin exchanges, or some sort of weighed average price between the biggest ones.


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

[User] [Star Wars]During the Battle of mustafar, obi-wan somehow convinces Anakin to return to the light. What happens next?

[Assistant]
Either of two options happen. One, Anakin immediately turns and goes to stop Palpatine's plans, and either succeeds and thus prevents him from converting the Republic into the Empire, and the war continues until peace can be settled a few months later; or he fails and dies.

Two, he and Obi-Wan retreat and bide their time until Anakin is truly ready to face down the real Dark Lord of the Sith, and in the meantime pretty much the galaxy goes on much as it did in the original narrative, the Empire is formed, citizens are enslaved or genocided. Only instead of Darth Vader at his side, Palpatine has a different enforcer.


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

[User]
What advantage does the eye's (or brain's) white-balance-like system give, and how does it work?

So I have noticed that when I close my right eye for a while and keep my left eye open in broad daylight, I see warmer colours in my left eye and see cooler colours in my right eye when I open it. This is similar to the white balance in smartphone cameras.

But is there any evolutionary advantage to this? And how does it work?

[Assistant] Auto color balance lets you see things in all kinds of light conditions (dynamic range is something like a factor of a billion!) and perceive colors correctly despite variations in the color of the illumination.  The mechanism is fatigue in your retinal cells, which makes each cells response self-adjust as fresh unexposed pigment gets regenerated in the eye.  In bright light not only does the total amount of pigment shrink, the rate of regeneration also shrinks.  There are other time dependent and spatially-dependent adjustment mechanisms but that is the dominant one.


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

[User] Why there is(was) a rivalry between Tesla and Edison?

[Assistant]
Tesla looked up Edison as an idol in his young days and he had a lot of brilliant plans. Edison felt like there would be competition with Tesla's plans so he hired Tesla and told him "I'll bet you $50,000 that you can't finish this project (maximizing efficiency of electric current)!" When Tesla finished, he went to go get the money from Edison but Edison told him "I was just joking with you! It's an American joke". Tesla immediately quit, but he went to work for Edison again because he had no where else to go for work. Edison, in return, hired him back to dig ditches. Tesla was fed up with Edison and teamed up with Edison's rival (George Westinghouse) to promote the use of A/C current of electricity. Since this would create competition, Edison told everybody that A/C current is bad and he tried to prove it by using A/C current on an electric chair to scare everybody. However, Tesla defeated Edison when he used his idea to bring electricity to the city of Buffalo in New York through Niagara Falls.

tl;dr Edison screwed Tesla over. Tesla got mad and launched a competitive way to beat Edison. Edison launched a PR campaign to slam Tesla. Tesla won by providing electricity to Buffalo, New York.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] What does a Wizarding War look like?

Conflict, in most societies, is unavoidable. What happens when war breaks out at home? Between different magical nations? Do any of these nations have standing militaries? What do they look like? What sort of personnel do they employ? What are their skills? Have their been significant conflicts besides the First and Second Wizarding Wars or the 70s and 90s?

[Assistant]
The 1st was the rise and fall of Grindelwald and the second was the 1st rise and fall of Voldemort. The battle against Voldemort by Harry Potter and his allies at Hogwarts was technically part of the 3rd Wizarding war.

Magic is complex and intricate.  At first it seems like it should be easy to win a war with magic.  Just say "Accio bad guy!], but as Rufus Scrimgeour said to the Muggle PM, "The problem is, they have magic too."(Thats what the daily prophet claimed he said anyways, they might be paraphrasing it).

The thousand complexities of magic, combined with the very small size of the wizarding community end up making a Wizarding War seem more akin to a muggle cold war.  Wizards acted as clandestine agents and command structures while using proxies for direct conflict.  For example, in the 1st wizarding war(1936-1945), Grindelwald and the Ministry of Magic used muggle governments as proxies in conflict, leading to millions dead or turned into inferni.  In the 2nd wizarding war, magical races across Britain like the giants and the centaurs were used as proxies.

Also like a muggle cold war, conflicts were involved primarily through clandestine agents.  Infiltration was more useful than brute force in killing or capturing enemy wizards, and magic made it all the easier to accomplish.  Any direct battles tended to be in conjunction with proxies and were fairly decisive.  Thus the wars had a flow:

Part 1: 1 side would take control of an area and lock it down, using wards, counter measures, ect to hunt for enemy agents.

Part 2:  Enemy agents would attempt to infiltrate the area and find weaknesses to the control structure of the controlling side.

Part 3: If those agents succeeded in identifying the weak points without getting caught/killed, pressure would be apllied to those points in order to break control of the area.  If the agents succeeded, then they would be the controlling side and the battle would be put back to part 1.  Due to the nature of magic, often the pressure point would be a certain individual, who's death or capture would mean a collapse of the command and control structure and the powerful magics that held the controlling side together.

Sometimes Part 3 would involve a large battle, sometimes part 1 would involve using proxy armies to clear the area, but the result was the same.  Wizards kill each other, or get other races to kill each other, decide who should be in power, and then go back to screwing over us goblins.


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

[User]
ELI5 - what makes "the cloud" different from "the internet"

What's the big deal?

I don't understand what makes the cloud so special.  It lets you work on and store things that live somewhere other than your computer, right?  Hasn't the internet been doing that for years?

Hasn't gmail, yahoo, hotmail and any other web-based mail client being doing that for years too?

[Assistant] "The cloud" is just a buzzword that represents some form of off-site storage. The internet itself, is as you described, an example of 'cloud' computing. People use it nowadays to mean more than just storing e-mail somewhere. There are 'cloud servers' (example: Amazon's cloud service), which not only host data, but provide TONS of computing power to act on that data. It's cheaper for businesses than setting up their own environments and maintaining them, hence the appeal (especially to management, which is why it's a buzzword in the first place).


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

[User]
[Star Wars] What makes Starkiller such a powerful force user?

Is he just naturally gifted or has something been done to him to make him so powerful?

[Assistant]
Naturally gifted, it's why Vader kept him after he killed his parents, he saw his potential
Usefulness. This potential combined with Vader's brutal but effective training is what made him so powerful.


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

[User] Why doesn't the suction power behind a fan feel as strong as the wind coming out of the front?

[Assistant] Because it's diffuse. The air coming out of the fan is in a very narrow path - the fan's energy is pointing in one direction. The air going into the fan might be coming from anywhere behind it, not from any particular angle, so the moving air is harder to feel at any one spot.


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

[User] [ASOIAF / GoT] Why did dragons shrink in size and get sickly over the course of the reign of the Targaryens to the point where the last dragon died in 153 AC? Is their size dependent upon the environment that they live in?

[Assistant] Its because they had so many that they were always locked up in the dragon pit, they were never properly given the freedom to roam and stand the tests of nature. Many after the DoD were left uncared for by the Targaryens because the King was deathly afraid of them after his mother was executed via dragon food. Same reason why so many animals do way worse in captivity such as Orcas, they have lower life expectancy from being constrained in such a small enviroment and lack of social bonding with others of their kind.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do we have swear words? Who decided they were inappropriate?

edit:Why do they offend you?

[Assistant]
Most "swear words" fall into two categories: sacrilegious and vulgar. One offends God, the other marks you as someone of low standing.

Sacrilegious swears ("God damn it!" "Jesus Christ!") are discouraged by the religion, for that religion's purposes (Thou shalt not take the Lord's name in vain).

Vulgar swears ("shit", "piss", "asshole", "fuck", etc.) are frowned upon because it is generally considered impolite to discuss bodily functions in public, and all of these words refer to bodily or sexual function.  This is compounded by the fact that these are often terms used by lower (often poor and/or uneducated) classes, so their use is discouraged to prevent one from appearing to be of low social class. Farmers "fuck", aristocrats "make love"; laborers "shit", lawyers "excuse themselves".

It is a way of the wealthy/educated/powerful in a society to separate themselves from the poor/uneducated/powerless by using a different vocabulary.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40K] Why weren't the Traitor Legions and their Primarchs erased from Imperium history and expunged from the records?

Surely whatever the II and XI did couldn't have been worse than causing the worst civil war in the history of mankind?

[Assistant]
Because it's not safe to forget.  Legiones II and XI are *gone*, so the Emperor could impose damnatio memoriae without risking harm to the Imperium as a result.  The Traitor Legions are still out there, a real and present threat to the Imperium.  While ordinary civilians don't know anything about Chaos Marines (since knowledge of Chaos is in itself dangerous) it would be idiotic for the leadership of the Imperium to erase their records of their most hated enemy.  And that's not even considering the loyalist Space Marines, some of whom *remember* the Horus Heresy, and all of whom hold a grudge...

I imagine that, when and if Chaos ceases to exist, the Imperium will swiftly and happily purge their archives and consign the memories of the Traitor Legions to oblivion. Good luck with that, though.


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

[User]
Why can't we communicate with our body?

I realize there are hormones coursing through our veins and electric signals through our nerves constantly but I'm talking about conscious orders like these for example:

"Deactivate pain receptors in such area for an hour!"
or
"Keep blood inside penis and belay ejaculation!"

Better yet, why can't I tell it to burn all this useless excess fat and augment my bone density while I start binging on calcium.

I'm barely scratching the top of the iceberg here. It appears to me that the survival advantages of this would be tremendous. Almost inconceivably so. In theory, one could coach the body into immortality.

The only reason I can think of for this not happening: Achieving control over pleasure centers early on leads to basically orgasming to death while neglecting food and everything else like those rats with the pleasure switches.

[Assistant]
Well, the first reason is that an intelligent, conscious mind appears to be a fairly recent evolutionary development, and so the kind of rewiring of the body that you're talking about might not be possible in evolutionary timescales. But let's forget that, for the moment, and talk about whether there's *really* any evolutionary advantage.

Let's take hunger as an example. Don't eat for a while and you'll start feeling a discomfort that makes you want to go and eat some food -- presumably other animals feel something similar. It's an annoying sort of sensation, so suppose you could "turn it off" when it shows up just like you do with an alarm clock. Ancestral man would, when he started to feel hungry, choose to press "snooze" over and over again instead of going to the trouble of finding some *actual* food, and he'd starve to death.

Likewise with pain. If your conscious mind can overrule the pain, then the pain no longer serves its purpose of telling you that you're damaged... you'll just turn the pain off as soon as you start to feel it.

No, you can't "coach" your body into immortality. How would you do that?

Really, the short answer is that up until very recently our bodies have been a lot smarter than our conscious minds have. Your body has a pretty damn good idea of how dense to make its bones or whether it's a good idea to walk on a broken leg, whereas a caveman doesn't.


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

[User]
ELI5 Why do FM radio stations sound clear but AM radio stations seem fuzzy?

AM radio stations seem to always have a fuzzy, unclear reception but FM radio doesnt seem to have that issue.

[Assistant]
AM radio is like communicating by changing the brightness of a light. Lots of things can block the light making it seem dimmer than expected.

FM radio is like communicating by changing the color of a light. Many things block the light making it dimmer, but few things can change its color easily.


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

[User] ELI5: The theory that black holes can be used for time travel.

[Assistant]
First it's important to realize that Black Holes aren't really holes, they're just an astronomical amount of stuff all compressed down to a relatively small size. But with all that stuff in such a small area of space comes a lot of gravity. Gravity does not just affect 3-dimensional space such as an object or a person, but also the 4th dimension of time. The more gravity that affects an object, the slower time moves for it (and the faster time moves around it from it's point of view). So black holes can be used for time travel in a sense that you're pressing the fast-forward button on the rest of the universe around you and when you get to the part of the movie you want to watch you can just move away from the black hole and continue.

The drawback here is that it only works as a fast-forward and cannot (to our current knowledge) be used to go backwards. It's not exactly time travel, it's more like stasis.


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

[User]
ELI5: The Pauli Exclusion Principle (Really bring it down)

Hello,

I wanted to learn about what the theorem means in a simpler sense than what I've been able to find online. I'd also like to know a quick summary of what the result of this principle is, like what features of atoms, technology, etc. are attributed to this principle.

Thank you!

[Assistant]
It's damn hard to ELI5 quantum mechanics, but here we go.

The Pauli Exclusion Principle means that two of the same kind of fermion(a particle with a half unit span) cannot be in the same place at the same time.

This explains why electrons have such strange orbits(its not actually an orbit, but lets just assume it is for now). Electrons are all the same, and all electrons are fermions. Since electrons, under quantum mechanics, occupy an entire range of spaces at once, they form strange stack shapes around a nucleus(the middle of an atom).

This also means that atoms must be a certain distance apart to be stable, since the electron "orbits" can never intersect each other.


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

[User] Whats the truth about applying water to burns? Will cold water cause it to blister or stifle it? What about lukewarm water?

[Assistant]
The reason you want to put cold water on a burn is because even after you remove the heat source that caused the burn, there is still thermal injury occurring until that heat can dissipate. Cold water helps dissipate the heat into the water rather than letting it continue into deeper layers of flesh. Lukewarm water can help, but the colder the water the better it is at carrying away excess heat.

Water does *not* work for chemical burns, in which a suitable neutralizing agent should be used.

Frostbite is a type of burn caused by extreme cold, and is treated with slow rewarming of the areas affected.

Blistering occurs when sufficient layers of skin are damaged by the burn, resulting in an inflammatory response leading to edema and fluid collection.


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

[User] ELI5: If a person that works under cover is killed, what is told to the family of that person (especially if that person lived a double life and the family had no idea)?

[Assistant] Like for police work? Just like any other family of another cop, they have to be ready for a possible death. Families are informed that their loved ones are going undercover just not informed of the details. So, it's not like cops live double lives.


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

[User] ELI5: Is there any benefit to having ice cream prepared on a marble slab?

[Assistant] The slab is refrigerated and kept very cold. This allows you to manipulate the ice cream and mix things into without it melting. Doing this in the store allows you to have very personalized icecreams rather than just having to have pre-mixed choices only. But  you could do the same with a steel slab or anything else you could keep cold.


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

[User] Eli5: How is electricity generated? Is there any difference between solar and coal?

[Assistant]
Electricity can be generated in many ways, but in all cases it is about creating a difference in voltage. Just like gravity causes things with mass to move from high places to low places, the "electric field" causes things with electric charge to move between different voltages. (And "moving charge" is electricity.)

The most common way to generate electricity is by somehow moving a magnet, which creates a voltage difference nearby. A typical electric generator is basically a series of spinning magnets surrounded by wires - an electric motor working backwards. Coal, natural gas, oil, and even nuclear power plants are just big steam engines for spinning magnets, just using different heat sources to create the steam. Some forms of solar power are the same as well, just using focused light as their heat source. Wind mills and dams are also spinning generators, but they use the direct force of the wind and water rather than steam engines.

Solar panels are *not* the same - they use an entirely different principle. The ELI5 version is that the light knocks electrons loose from the panel, which is arranged so that they can only "fall" back in one direction, causing a net flow. In the same way that a generator is a motor working backwards, these are basically LED lights working backwards.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is there a standard arrangement of the numbers on a game die?

[Assistant] Some arrangements of numbers keep the extremes from clumping up on one side of the die, which if the die is unbalanced, would mean significantly higher or lower averages if rolled a large number of times.  Though with dicemaking techniques available today, most dice are going to be mostly fair for most practical purposes regardless of pip arrangements, so it's nowadays mostly due to tradition and symmetry/aesthetic.


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

[User]
[Red Alert 2] If Albert Einstein prevented WW2 by killing Hitler in 1923, how is there still the wreck of the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor?

Despite WW2 being prevented by removing Hitler from the timeline, in Red Alert 2, we clearly see the wreck of the *USS Arizona* at Pearl Harbor.

How is this possible?

Without Nazi Germany as an ally, its highly unlikely that Japan would have still undertaken a pre-emptive strike against the United States.

And even if they still did, with such a significant disruption in the time line, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that the attack on Pearl Harbor and months/years leading up would have unfolded just like it did in the prime timeline.

Just like in Europe, with the removal of Hitler from the timeline, history in the Pacific theater of the Red Alert timeline would have likely unfolded quite differently than the prime timeline.

[Assistant]
WW2 wasn't really prevented just altered to by between the Allies and the Soviet Union.

So instead of Pearl Harbour being attacked by Japanese Forces it was attacked by the Soviets, sinking the USS Arizona.


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

[User]
CMV: Politicians who claim that they can save the Rust Belt are being dishonest

The nature of free trade, globalization, and automation means that there will always be winners and losers. In 2016, Trump secured the presidency by pushing a protectionist platform that promised to renege on NAFTA and the TPP and implement tariffs to prop up an unprofitable manufacturing sector. Ultimately, his tariffs ended up raising prices and hurting other sectors of the economy, and most importantly, none of the jobs that he promised came back.

The reason why those jobs aren't coming back is simple: The United States is a post-industrial economy and has been so since the 70s. Even China, the current manufacturing capital of the world, has seen average wages rise to the point where businesses are now moving their manufacturing to more affordable countries in Southeast Asia.

The Clinton campaign took the support of Rust Belt voters for granted and the Democrats still continue to push the frankly tone-deaf and patronizing idea that workers who lost their jobs should be enrolled in "job retraining programs" and come out the other end as freshly minted computer programmers. Do they really think that the average blue-collar mining, mill, or factory worker (who only has a high school diploma and has worked in the same job for their entire life) would magically want to (or could) become a software developer and start churning out iPhone apps to support their family?

As we enter a new age of increasing automation where 100 workers in a factory can be replaced by a team of 5, the chances of the Rust Belt returning to its former glory reach asymptotically closer and closer to zero. There is no easy answer for the Rust Belt in the same way there was no easy answer for the horse and buggy industry after the invention of the automobile or for handweavers after the invention of the mechanical loom.

I believe politicians know this but instead choose to instill false hope because anything else would cost them votes. Due to their dishonesty, our country continues to be held hostage every 4 years by the misplaced dream that the America of the 50s will rise again if you "just vote for the right guy" only for the same voters to be left disappointed as each year brings more job layoffs, factory closures, and abandoned neighborhoods in its wake. The United States needs to come to terms with the realization that those jobs and neighborhoods aren't coming back and move on.

[Assistant] Depends what you mean by "save". If you mean "bring it back to it's former glory, exactly" it's unlikely to happen. The world has moved on. If you mean "alleviate some of the transition pains and don't leave bunches of people in a lurch" there's probably something there.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why cant the spinal cord repair itself like our other nerves can?

I hear about surgeons reattaching hands/fingers fairly often, with patients recovering at least some movement in those limbs, so why cant the nerves on our spinal cord repair themselves when severed?

[Assistant]
Because there are a LOT of nerves in the spinal cord... severe damage to it causes a loss of many, many functions (both control and feeling in the whole body below the injury). All of those nerves healing well enough that all of those functions in all those areas are totally restored is a much bigger task than nerves in a finger healing enough that you can move the finger again.

And the outcomes arent as different as you suggest. Some people with spinal cord damage eventually recover some or most of their function. Some people with reattached fingers do NOT recover use of them, or they might recover some feeling or movement but not fully recover both of them.


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

[User] Whats the difference between mens and womens multivitamins?

[Assistant] Their effectiveness is debatable but they purport to target the specific needs of each gender i.e. iron and calcium for women (anaemia and osteoporosis); zinc and selenium for men (testosterone production and sperm production) etc etc.


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

[User] ELI5: Where do internet providers get their internet from and why can't we make our own?

[Assistant]
The Internet is the colloquial term for Interconnected Networks. Your ISP has an arrangement with one or more other companies, who in turn have agreements with yet more companies.

Some of these organisations spend lots of money to run physical cables across the planet in the expectation that their cables will be used to transport information between the two or more points that they connected together.

You can form an organization that connects to existing infrastructure and if you'd on-sell it, your organisation is an ISP. You could also set up actual infrastructure, but that's much more costly and risky.

Different countries have rules about this mainly to do with illegal use that you'll need to abide by and since this is big business, many roadblocks exist to prevent your little organisation from competing with the incumbent.

Some towns and cities, disenchanted with incumbent providers, have started their own networks and succeed in larger and smaller degree in providing their citizens with Internet connectivity. Various freenets also exist which allow information to travel within the group but not to the wider Internet. This often bypasses legal impediments to creating an ISP.

TL;DR The Internet is a collection of networks and your can start your own any time; that's how this thing actually works.


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

[User]
[Spider-man/Marvel] I've always wondered, why don't Spider-man's foes ever target his hands/wrists? Take out his arms and he's basically done for.

Peter's web shooters are like 90% of what makes him spider-man. Why don't villains from his rogue gallery, especially after facing against him so many times, simply break his hands? Or crack his wrist or something? Basically, remove the webs from his arsenal.

He gets into many hand go hand fights, I'm surprised no one's ever just taken out his web shooters.

[Assistant]
Well they do actually, but only the smart ones such as Doctor Octopus, Green Goblin, Mysterio etc. Foes like Electro, Sandman, and Rhino don't think of things like that.

The problem for Spider-Man's foes is that he is not useless without his webs. He still has super strength, heightened speed and reflexes, a spider sense and genius level intelligence to back him up.


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

[User] ELI5. Why do rainbows all have the same shape. You never see one going straight overhead or see one from the end.

[Assistant]
Because when a raindrop bends light, the light exits the raindrop at an angle 40 to 42 degrees away from the angle it entered the raindrop.

If the sun is very low in the sky, either just before sunset or just after sunrise, we can see a half circle.


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

[User]
[Space Balls] Are the Schwartz rings really bupkis?

Early on, we see Lonestar using the Schwartz ring to project a mle energy weapon snd shoot some kind of energy beams. Later on, when it's lost, Yogurt claims that the ring was bupkis and that he found it in the bottom of a box of Cracker Jacks. Do all the powers of the Schwartz ring actually come from within, and the ring is just a kind of psychological  prop? Or is the point more that while the Schwartz rings *are* useful in terms of the blade projection ability, etc, it's pretty small potatoes compared to other, non-ring dependant schwartz powers?  Or is the ring pretty powerful all-around (even if Schwartz users aren't completely impotent without one), but Yogurt was bending the truth to tell Lonestar what he needed to hear to stay in the fight and not give in to despair?

Update: Oops. Spaceballs should be one word with no space.

[Assistant]
They seem to have a use, in that they are capable of projecting the beams to fight with. However, if we take what Yogurt says as true, and the ring itself was merely from a Cracker Jack box, this could imply a Schwarz user may create such a beam out of other objects as well.

Yogurt's point certainly seems to be that the ring itself is not the source of one's abilities, but that it is just a useful conduit which makes it easier, almost like a magic wand.


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

[User]
[Death Note] What would happen if you wrote the name and cause of death of an operator of a vehicle with passengers, such that the passengers would die if the operator died?

I forgot exactly where, but a while back I had a disagreement about this with someone, and we were both 100% sure of ourselves.

I remember the rules that concerned this scenario:

1) If the cause of death is not specified, the person will simply die of a heart attack.

10) Whether the cause of the individual's death is either a suicide or accident, if the death leads to the death of more than the intended, the person will simply die of a heart attack. This is to ensure that other lives are not influenced.

26) Even though only one name is written in the Death Note, if it influences and causes other humans that are not written in it to die, the victim's cause of death will be a heart attack.

55) In the occasion where the cause of death is possible but the situation is not, only the cause of death will take effect for that victim. If both the cause and the situation are impossible, that victim will die of heart attack.

The other person was convinced that the operator would die of a heart attack (during the operation of the vehicle), and if other people died because of it, so be it. When I pointed out the rule regarding not affecting others, he said that it wasn't as important for some reason. He claimed that rule 10 would supersede rule 26 because it's higher up on the list of rules. (???)

I reasoned that the likely scenario would be that the person would die of a heart attack *after* ceasing operation of the vehicle and the passengers disembarking safely. Naturally, so that the operator's death would not affect others. I know this isn't absolute when interpreting the rules, but I think it makes more sense than just throwing one rule out altogether.

He said I was making stuff up and called me an idiot(now that I think about it, it may have been on Reddit).

But now I'm curious to see what others think.

[Assistant] The death note has never done anything beyond what is written on the note itself. Most trains have both a assistant train operator and dead man switch, so a dead operator wouldn't doom the entire train to begin with.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do Captcha's know that I'm not a robot when all I had to do was click on a box?

So I understand how most captcha's work, but what I'm wondering is how sometimes it doesn't even make me fill the entire captcha out and automatically decides that I'm not a robot. It just seems odd to me that it can do that right after I click one button and how botters/spammers can't abuse this on their bots.

[Assistant] The boxes usually capture mouse movement, to see if it's "natural" movement, versus just sending the commands directly.  It also looks at your public cookies to see if they're consistent with a real internet user, versus a single-purpose bot.


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

[User]
[MCU] Avengers: Infinity War Megathread - INFINITY WAR QUESTIONS BELONG HERE **ONLY**

You know the drill.

[Assistant] So Thanos' goal revolves around the fact that there are finite resources in the universe and an ever-increasing population that will consume those resources. So once he achieves unlimited power why doesn't he just.... make sure the resources never run out?


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

[User]
[Witcher] What's the extent of Swallow?

Can it regenerate lost limbs? What's its limits?

[Assistant]
Hard to tell - Witchers that lose a limb while fighting eldritch terrors probably don't live long enough to regenerate anything. There aren't many volunteers to lop off a finger to test it out.

I would say that the idea is sound in theory, but would likely require a lot of time and many many doses.


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

[User]
[Marvel] Why, in general, do people accept super-powered humans like the Fantastic 4, Captain America, Spiderman etc but have so much hatred towards mutants?

Although non-mutant supers have also had problems (eg: the Superhuman Registration Act) mutants have had more direct actions to harm them (the Mutant Registration Act, the Sentinel programs, the destruction of Genosha etc) and have groups that actively target them. There are just as many non-mutant villains as there are mutant villains. Are the different viewpoints just driven by prejudice and racism or is there more to it than that?

[Assistant]
Mutants are a new species, which will one day replace humanity. They're the homo sapiens to our homo neanderthalis; they will be here after we're gone. A lot of people don't like that idea.

"Normal" superhumans are just people who had a weird, one in a million happenstance occur to them, which they say as less of a threat.

Plus, the numbers make it a different story. Only so many people are ever going to get hit by gamma bombs or cosmic rays and turned into superhumans. But the number of mutants will just keep growing until they take over.

Plus, prejudice and racism.

(That said, any time things get really bad for mutants, the human superheroes tend to get lumped in very quickly. In Days of Future Past, the non-mutant superheroes were hunted down and put in the camps, too.)


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

[User]
ELI5: Is there anything chemically that happens in the body to trigger high or low self esteem?

In other words, is it solely based off of moments in our lives that create our own self perception or is it chemically predetermined to an extent?

[Assistant]
I think a lot of people in these sorts of threads are putting the cart before the horse, so to speak.

Yes, when you have low self-esteem, depression etc. you have a chemical imbalance, but that explains *what* is happening, not *why* it is happening.

All of these problems come from a disorder in thinking, and are based around negative *perceptions* people have of themselves. When an alcoholic picks up another bottle of beer even though every thought in his mind is telling him not, he doesn't decide to drink it anyway because a chemical imbalance is causing low-self esteem, he drinks it anyway because he subconsciously doesn't *believe* he can.

That's why a guy might go years without asking out a girl due to believing he is undesirable and boring, and a result of that is that he'll develop a chemical imbalance because of it. However, when one day he finds himself alone with the pretty girl he's been helping do homework and decides to just go for it and she says yes, he'll *instantly* feel over the moon and incredibly self-confident, since his idea that he's undatable has been shattered and him coming to this realisation feels incredibly powerful and liberating. A result of this is that physically, his chemicals in his brain have changed, but he didn't feel good *because* they changed, they changed because *he felt good.*


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Has there ever been a planet that was highly resentful of being the subject of Prime Directive non-interference?

Suppose a planet finally invented warp drives, has Federation first contact, etc etc. But then they learn that their planet has been under Federation monitoring for the last 150 years, and these space dudes just stood by while down on the ground they were experiencing war, genocide, famine, disasters...

Would they be morally entitled to outrage? Would the Federation be open to amending the Prime Directive after hearing their input? If this planet decided to use their new space technology to benevolently uplift any other planets they could find, how would the Federation react?

[Assistant]
That sadly happens a lot, but most species understand the necessity of the Prime Directive. Hell Earth nuked itself to oblivion while the Vulcans watched!

Also it's not a Federation law, just a Starfleet Order so an independent nation could uplift species if they wanted to ( under heavy scrutinisation from the UFP)


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

[User] If education and healthcare are not public goods, why are they produced by governments?

[Assistant]
A public good is just something that everyone has access to and is essentially limitless in its supply (as far as access is concerned). The word "public" is not related to governments being public entities.

Governments produce healthcare and education because it's an investment. For all the focus on the "invisible hand" line of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, it is often forgotten that his literal point was that the wealth of nations is the value of its population/citizens. Having a population that doesn't die or is infeebled by disease and is educated is a pretty good advantage over other states.

EDIT: sources: Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations; every economics reference to the definition of a public good.

It is not unreasonable to disagree with the idea that these two goods should be provided by governments but the question is predicated on the supposition that public goods should necessarily be subject to further scrutiny due to being provided by a public entity.


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

[User]
[EVE Online] Why can't I stuff cargo into the ore hold of my Retriever?

Well yes i know it's called an *ore* hold, but it's an entire frikkin' 23500m^3 compared to the 450m^3 of my cargo hold. Why can't I put these 10000 Soil into the ore hold?

[Assistant] Ore is ore. It's stone, rock, and minerals. Except in the rarest of cases, they don't need to be stored in special conditions. With most cargo, however, you need some sort of environmental and atmospheric control.  In the case of the soil you mentioned, it needs to remain in an oxygenated environment to maintain its quality.


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

[User] ELI5: What does the button on either side of the cross walk actually do?

[Assistant]
It depends on the crosswalk.  For some of them: nothing.  The pedestrian will always get a signal to cross eventually, and the button is there to make them think that they have some control over it so they don't attempt to cross before they get the signal to do so.

For others, the pedestrians never get a signal to cross unless the button is pressed.  This usually happens either when the intersection has traffic signals that change quickly, and don't give pedestrians enough time to cross (so pressing the button slows down the timing of the lights at the intersection and causes the pedestrian crossing signal to light up), or when the traffic that needs to stop for you to cross will never stop unless cars are detected at the red light at the intersection (so without the button, you'd have to wait until a car showed up, which could minutes, or hours).


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

[User] [Mass Effect] Why was there a human Reaper ship?

[Assistant] That thing in ME2 was a human-Reaper larva. That thing was *tiny* compared to a capitol ship Reaper. The general humanoid shape of the species that was harvested is nestled deep inside a Reaper ship.


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

[User]
ELI5:Why do people treat Beef Wellington as some special "showstopper" of a dish? Pigs in a blanket isn't consider so much more fancy than regular hotdogs?

I mean isn't having a prime cut of beef enough? what purpose does the dough actually serve?

[Assistant] Beef Wellington isn't just meat wrapped in bread. If made traditionally, it also has layers of pate, usually foie gras, and duxelles (a very fine mince of mushrooms, onions, shallots, and herbs, cooked down in butter). It's expensive, making a proper duxelles is time-consuming, and a completely different thing than just wrapping some dough around a piece of meat.


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

[User]
ELI5: How in the F do jellyfish register things like colors with no brains to process things like colors?

This may be a suuuuper high guy question... but Ive seen specials about jellyfish and apparently theyll gravitate towards reds or certain visuals. Since they have no brain or eyes for that matter, how in the F is that possible? How do they even function AT ALL with no brain? Nothing about it makes sense. Help me.

[Assistant]
Instead of a single, centralized brain, jellyfish possess a net of nerves. This ring nervous system is where their neurons are concentrateda processing station for sensory and motor activity.

These neurons send chemical signals to their muscles to contract, allowing them to swim, and do other stuff.

But they just dont just swim aimlesslysome jellyfish can actually navigate.


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

[User] Can someone help me understand what the difference is between an actual infinite and a potential infinite?

[Assistant]
Okay, so the difference is really between process and object. A potential infinity is a non-terminating process in which, theoretically, one can simply add or divide or multiply in perpetuity, but if one were to stop at any given point, one would arrive at a finite point.

Actual infinity pertains to objects that are infinite in nature or defined infinite. For example, the set of whole numbers. The set itself is an object that is infinite by definition but can be treated a single set, this is helpful when deriving implications of the object.

A non-mathematical example would be a collection of all possible universes.

I hope that helps.


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

[User]
I think that people who hit their children as "punishment" are sadistic and uneducated.CMV

I mean...there could be number of ways to teach your child to behave and discipline him/her,but physically abusing your child won't help in any way if anything exacerbate the issue.There's been a plethora of studies that posited that children who were spanked/whipped/ect. grow up with lower IQs and behavioral issues,as well as conditions such as anxiety and depression.Any person with a modicum of common sense would tell themselves that hitting your child won't be the best idea.I would like to get some input on this,I want to hear the other side of the fence.

[Assistant]
The major problem is that most of these studies do not distinguish between an occasional spanking and regular serious abuse.
If you put all kinds of laying a hand on your child into one category, then the obviously damaging things are used to argue against lesser forms that may or may not share the same damaging qualities.

The reason for using physical punishment is to create a clear negative connection with a behaviour. When kids reach a certain age that grants a certain amount of mental reason, logic can be used. With small children, you can't explain why something is bad, so there needs to be another way to learn.
When it comes to relatively small things, letting the child experience the negative consequences often works - let a kid touch something that's a little too hot, and they will feel a moment of pain and realize it is a bad idea (for example). But with bigger things, we can't afford to let a kid feel the actual results. We can't let a kid run into the street and be hit by a car to learn that cars are dangerous. We can't let a kid pull a bowl of soup off the stove. With things like this, parents try to create some sort of unpleasant thing that happens when they try, so that they link the dangerous action with the unpleasantness and don't do it again.
There are many ways to do this, but when other options don't work, spanking can be a way to associate a dangerous thing with a bit of physical pain - which kids generally want to avoid.  If done properly (for the kid's best interest), it is a tiny bit of pain - just enough for the kid to associate and not do whatever they were doing again. Anything that actually damages the child in any lasting manner, or happens frequently is clearly overkill.   But in an occasionally-used mild form, it can work a lot better than trying to reason with a kid who doesn't yet do reason.


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

[User]
what did heraclitus mean by this qoute?

qouteIf you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it, for it is not to be reached by search or trail.''

[Assistant]
It's pretty difficult to give clear interpretations of what Heraclitus meant in every fragment since they are provided without much context.

It contains within it the standard sort of paradoxical reasoning that Heraclitus usually employs - we can expect and encounter the unexpected, and yet we cannot search for it?  What on earth this means is a bit bewildering.  You might think, after all, that the unexpected is exactly the thing you can't expect, and this must be Heraclitus' more general point.  You can try to expect the unexpected *as such*, but unexpected as it is you can't go looking for it (by definition) in the particular.

(You might think that Heraclitus is drawing attention to a problem like the one Plato draws attention to in Meno - that seeking a thing requires, in some way, knowing a thing.)

This paradox of perception and knowledge may be part of the general theme in Heraclitus' work about the ways in which we have easy access to certain kinds of knowledge and yet are rather bad at understanding.


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

[User] Why does coffee work as a laxative?

[Assistant]
Some of the coffee's ingredients (medical researchers aren't sure which, but it's *not* caffeine) causes our bodies to secrete higher amounts of gastin and cholecystokinin, which have a stimulating effect on the intestines, causing them to push on our poop harder/faster.

I've learned through trial and error that Peet's "Big Bang" contains particularly high amounts of this whatever-it-is.


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

[User]
ELI5 what are "butterflies in my stomach?"

What am I feeling when I'm nervous and get "butterflies" in my stomach? Why does this happen only when I'm nervous/worried?

[Assistant] When you are nervous, you body goes into 'fight or flight' mode, and basically prepares the body to either do a runner or smack someone. It does this by diverting the blood in your system to your arms and legs. The butterflies you feel is just the blood being diverted away from the stomach, together with the high level of adrenaline you are experiencing which raises your heart rate,  and your breathing which heightens your sensitivity to changes internally.


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

[User]
CMV: "Educate yourself" means the exact opposite

In nearly all cases, when someone says "educate yourself" they actually mean "read a bunch of extremely biased sources until you you've become indoctrinated into believing in my ideology." This is the case for a wide variety of group-thinks be it flat earthers, QAnon, anti-vax, BLM, critical theorists, etc. Historically education has meant challenge yourself with viewpoints that make you uncomfortable to improve your understanding of the world. Most if not all of the members of these groups have been tricked into thinking that they have all the answers to the worlds problems and anyone who dares challenge them is some sort of "ist" or a sheep.

Edit: This post dost not make any statement about the merit of the beliefs held by each of the groups I mentioned, nor does it intend to. The veracity of the groups' claims varies widely. I am purely commenting on the rhetoric the ideologies typically engage in.

[Assistant]
Isn't the person saying this suggesting you do _exactly_ what you say "historically education is"?  They are recognizing a context where you disagree with what they know and suggesting you "challenge yourself with viewpoints that make you uncomfortable to improve your understanding of the world"?

It seems to me that your biggest problem is that you think when people say this they tend to be _wrong_, not that they have any contrarian idea on what it means to "educate yourself".  You describe almost perfectly an alignment between "historical education" and the thing you're criticizing.  That you think THEY should be the ones "educating themselves" is just to say you disagree with their view, isn't it?


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

[User] [MCU] Could a person of normal strength like Sam Wilson use Cap's shield?

[Assistant]
It weighs 12lbs. Could a regular human use it as a shield? Absolutely. Could they use it as a ranged weapon like Cap?

...How far do you think you could throw a 12lb Frisbee?

If it helps, a football weighs 1lb. An Olympic discus weighs 4.4lbs. No regular human being is throwing that thing like Cap does.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do we age?

I'm wondering, why do all creatures eventually age and die. If our bodies are able to recreate cells, and repair skin, etc. Then what causes us to age, and eventually die? And why do different animals have drastically different lifetimes?

[Assistant]
Our bodies are able to recreate cells and repair skin and stuff like that but there are limits.  You know how if you have an accident, maybe you accidentally cut yourself with a knife while preparing vegetables, the wound will close up without much issue so long as you protect it and make sure you don't get an infection but you'll always have a scar showing where the cut used to be.  Likewise, your body will produce new cells to replace the old ones as you age but the replacements won't be quite as good.  The older you get, the slower and less accurate your replacement system gets until one or more of your organs can't do its job any more and you die.

The reason we die is essentially tied to evolution.  The strength of evolving creatures is the ability to adapt to environments.  When the environment changes, creatures that can't adapt to the new environment die out.  Being able to age perfectly doesn't help you in this situation.  What you need is a population that can change as the environment changes.  Death allows you to make room for new and varied offspring, some of which will be suited to however the environment changes next.
If it helps, you could kind of think of this from the perspective of running a telephone company with a fixed budget.  You can only afford to employ so many workers but technology keeps changing.  When you go from manual switchboards to automatic, do you keep the old operators or do you hire people who know how to program the computers?

Different animals have different lifetimes for various reasons.  Some of them are very short-lived because their environment allows only a small window for reproduction or because it allows them to adapt to new environments very quickly.  Some of them are long-lived because they are capable of surviving in a wide range of environments or because their chosen environment doesn't change much.  Other aspects such as reproductive capabilities, intelligence or dependence may also play a part.
Humans, for instance, have young which are vulnerable for rather a long time.  The advantage of this is that we have time to develop remarkable intelligence in the long run.  In the short term though, it means that the parents have to live for long enough to protect their offspring until it can protect itself.  In contrast, there are a number of animal species where the adults die shortly after reproducing and the young are either protected by numbers or born at a stage where they can function as adults nearly straight away.


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

[User] ELI5: why do canals not freeze under bridges when they freeze elsewhere?

[Assistant]
Bridges are often pinch points where the water is compressed and the increased current makes it harder to freeze. They're expensive to build so they're often built across narrow points in the water. They often also have supporting posts in the middle.

Both the increased flow as the banks close in and the deflection in flow caused by the supporting posts cause increased turbulence and motion in the water, and calm water freezes much more easily than water in motion. So as a result the ice in that area takes longer to freeze and less time to melt because it's thinner.


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

[User]
[Up] What were Carl and Ellie's middle school/high school/college years like?

The movie jumps from "elementary school-aged" to "married" in an instant.

What was Carl and Ellie's relationship like in the intervening years? Did they have any other relationships besides each other?

[Assistant]
It was very rare for people to go to college before the GI Bill. Considering Carl & Ellie were children in the 1930-1940s, most likely they came of age at the end of WWII.

The movie jumps from them being kids to being married in an instant. That isn't too far from reality for that period. Especially for girls, they would have been married in their late teens or very early 20's.

If they were high school sweethearts, they may have dated others casually (which would have meant at most kissing, or very low level sexual contact, if that), but it would not have been unusual for them to have been their first (and only) loves.


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

[User] When I move a light switch into a certain position in the middle, I can hear crackling. If left there long enough, would it start a fire?

[Assistant] The crackling you are hearing is most likely electricity arcing between a set of contacts. Depending on how the light switch is made it could generate enough heat to start a fire, or alternatively, if it doesn't start a fire the arcing could build up enough carbon and pitting to the point where the connection would be bad.


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

[User]
How to address people that look down on anything related to philosophy

Where I'm from, philosophy is a derogatory term. When someone is talking too much, people will say to him "stop philosophizing". If you're studying any philosophy-related college, you're labeled as a bum. There's a myriad of running jokes related to students of philosophy.

Why is this happening? Should all philosophers give their lectures while doing hard labor to appear more credible to the public?

[Assistant]
If they ask you "What have philosophy ever done for us?" or "What is philosophy?" that is in itself a philosophical question and the answers they receive are philosophical ones - and the framework for understanding the question and the answer is philosophical. Philosophy is the foundation of all science; Latin from Greek *philosophia* 'love of wisdom'. (source oxford dictionary)

Without philosophy there would be no computers, since there would be no logic. Just tell them that when they surf their IPads and use their smartphones.

Asking and joking about other academical subjects just generally shows they are 1) Dogmatic thinkers or 2) Not educated or knowledgeable of what the discipline is studying (or what the discipline have accomplished).

The most interesting question is: Why would you even bother arguing against people who don't appreciate knowledge? Stay away from dogmatic people cause they won't listen to what you say anyway.


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

[User]
ELI5: What is a hacker really doing?

I've always wanted to know why hackers are jamming on their keyboards and what they can possibly be doing that requires such precision and speed.

[Assistant]
> I've always wanted to know why hackers are jamming on their keyboards

In reality, this doesn't happen. This is done in movies to make it look dramatic and exciting. Real computer hacking involves staring at a computer screen for hours of a time, searching a lot on Google, muttering "hmmm" and various expletives to oneself now and then, and stroking one's hacker-beard while occasionally tapping on a few keys.


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

[User]
[Men in Black] Why did The Bug bother trying to negotiate with Edgar?

The first thing The Bug says is "Place projectile weapon on the ground." Did a shotgun pose any threat to it? Would it have immediately grabbed and eaten Edgar anyway if he had complied? It didn't seem to have any trouble ambushing him, and was openly bigoted towards human life, so why ask him to surrender?

[Assistant]
You can see through the rest of the movie that the Bug has a rather Sarcastic or Cynical Personality, so maybe this introduction was only to show his traits for the rest of the movie.

Second thought: It was an easier way of luring Edgar closer to the hole, if you are a being that feels superior you might think that ambushing or attacking first it's a waste of energy... Reason why the Bug basically only killed when it felt fully offended (when a person kills cockroaches) and didn't kill Edgar's wife (he may have thought it was a waste of time)


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

[User]
Can we heat a ball of iron enveloped by a dense layer of rock without heating the rock itself?

I was admiring the prospects of humans inhabiting Mars and I started to wonder if it was possible to restart mantle convection. I know that it is much more complex than this, but is there a way to somehow pass energy though rock in some way to heat metal?

If this was possible, do you think its feasible to drill down to a certain level and start passing energy to the center of a planet's core? I would like to think that this energy just needs to excite the planet's core more than it excites rock.

[Assistant]
Heat will inevitably be lost outward and into the mantle, which we see on Earth as ambient surface temperature and volcanic activity.

The best method for heating metal without heating surrounding materials is induction heating.


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

[User]
ELI5: Egg in A Bottle Experiment

I don't really grasp the concept. I figure it has something to do with pressure, but what is the actual science behind it?

[Assistant]
It's quite simple actually. Hot air expands, and cold air shrinks. Thus, first you warm up the air in the bottle, causing it to flow out. Then, you block the bottle by putting the egg on it.

As the air cools down, the pressure inside drops, and it sucks the egg in.


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

[User]
What is the strength of the Voyager 1 signal equivalent to, when it reaches earth and how clearly can we "hear" it?

I once heard that it would be like dropping a pebble into the ocean in Japan and detecting the energy from that in California, but that's probably not right.

[Assistant]
Since no expert so far commented, I'll copy this from Nasa's official Voyager page:

*The antennas must capture Voyager information from a signal so weak that the power striking the antenna is only 10 exponent -16 watts (1 part in 10 quadrillion). A modern-day electronic digital watch operates at a power level 20 billion times greater than this feeble level.*

Hopefully someone with relevant experience can tell us a bit more about it.


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

[User] [Marvel/DC] Can Superman bend Adamantium?

[Assistant]
No. Theres a sliding scale, but basically Caps shield is the absolute, most durable material in all existence. The only beings able to manipulate it are beings of reality-bending power, like the One Above All, Infinity Gauntlet (with the requisite gems), and other celestial or eternals. Wolverines claws are just one hair below Caps shield in purity and strength.

Superman, not quite at that level, could certainly fuck up Wolverine in a thousand ways, but the skeleton would remain intact. Hes at one point been vaporized to ash, and slowly regenerated from a single cell left remaining.


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

[User]
ELI5: What does actually happen inside a computer when it crashes or buffers?

Like if a program freezes, why does that happen
How does it actually manage to get stuck and reacts with a blue screen of death?

[Assistant]
Crashing  can occur from many things but usually occurs when the program encounters 'exceptions.'

Modern programming often has 'functions'. Think of a program making toast. You rarely write a program to make the toast all in one go, you instead split it into functions.

First you get bread. Then you get butter. Then you put the bread in the toaster. Then you turn it on. Then you wait. Then you take it out. Then you butter the bread.

If any of those functions encounter an exception, it disrupts the flow of the other functions. What if there's a power cut - you can't turn the toaster on, which means every step beyond that is now useless - that can be thought of as an exception.

In programming, most of the time exceptions are planned for and the program should know how to handle them. If it doesn't, that's when it'll crash. It simply crashes because at one stage of a process, something unexpected happened and the programmer didn't implement anything to let it recognize that.

Buffering is very different from crashing. A buffer in programming is just a medium between data when you move it. Think of the toast example - the plate is essentially a buffer - it's just there to hold the bread while you move it from the bag of bread to the toaster.

A program may use a buffer to store outputs temporarily if an input can't receive them quickly enough, such as your browser buffering a video in advance because YouTube is sending you the video faster than you watch it.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do decapitated heads go unconscious instantly after being separated from the body instead of staying aware for at least a few moments?

[Assistant]
No one can say.  Few people have been decapitated and reported back in.

There are plenty of reports of discorporated heads blinking and mouthing words and variously moving for surprisingly long after being removed.

At the same time we know that fainting is often caused by a drop in blood pressure to the brain, the brain senses a problem with blood delivery and it causes a person to go unconscious and fall, because when lying down your blood isn't working against gravity to get to your head.

When your head is removed its kind of hard to have much blood pressure.

Then again, there's a lot of trauma involved who can say the brain exercises its manual for crisis efficiently.

Once you cross the line from most likely going to die to certain death you reach beyond the barrier that evolution cares at all.  If there are any bits of directed action and substance in that state they are not based on anything meaningful in terms of man's biology and what he has adapted for.

Evolution wants to keep you alive for reproduction and passing on your genes, once your death is assured, it has no more use for you.


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

[User]
Does a binary star system create a dynamic Goldilocks zone?

Would 2 or more stars in a system create a habitable zone which is always changing in position in respect to the stars location?

[Assistant]
If you mean an elliptic zone whose boundaries (min and max distance from the center of mass of the system) fluctuate, then yes.  We'd only call the portion that is stable a 'goldilocks zone', though.

If you mean a zone of physical parameters that allow habitability and actually orbits around and among the components, or (quasi-)periodically 'appears' from place to place, then that too is possible in principle, but the system probably (~certainly) wouldn't support a planetary orbit that follows such a zone.

'Habitable/goldilocks zone' implies stability over periods where life can spring up and evolve.  From the only example we have, this means millions to billions of years.  For your wording of "zone always changing in position", I'd therefore say:  No.  Goldilocks zones are stable (by definition).


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

[User]
[40K] Who is the single most powerful/influential mortal(!) being in WH40K universe?

And what happens once they're gone? By mortal I mean being able to die of old age in shorter span than is life-cycle of a star. Also no ambiguous stuff like the Emperor, you know Emperor-damn well that He's eternal.

[Assistant]
Ok, so lets break it down.

We can rule out any orks, tyranids, necrons, dark eldar and chaos marines (who are arguably not mortal anyway).  They are individually powerful, but the influence of an individual is limited to his Waargh/Hive etc and any planets he attacks.  Small scale stuff...

The Tau have the organisation and cohesion to unite their empire as one, but their empire is still small.

The Eldar are the same as the Tau.  They will all unite for the right cause, and they get bonus points because their foresight magnifies the influence of any actions they do take.  But ultimately, there simply isn't enough of them.

Space marine chapter masters face the same problem as the Tau.  Incredibly powerful and cohesive, but by design, each individual chapter is too small to shape the face of the galaxy at the behest of one mans orders.

So what we have left is the Imperial Guard.  Fractious, disorganised, poorly equipped and under skilled.  But united in purpose, and available in numbers no one but the orks can match.  Utilised all at once, for a single purpose, there is no force in the galaxy that could stop them (well, except the orks).

So if the circumstances dictated it, who could wield that power?  An inquisitor might wield a portion of it, but would be removed from office if he amassed too much.  Imperial guard officers etc face the same problem.  Which leaves us the High Lords of Terra, and specifically, the Ecclesiarch.  He alone could, in the right circumstances, break rank with the other High Lords without losing his powerbase, and through religious loyalty, still command the uncountable guardsmen in the galaxy.  We'd have another Horus Heresy on our hands, but he'd win...


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

[User]
eli5: How did the people hydrate themselves with beer historically?

I've always read that societies began to brew and drink beer instead of water historically because it was safer than most drinking waters. I know by today's standards it would be an incredibly light beer but how did they stay hydrated off of it?

[Assistant] You answered it yourself, they would ferment their alcohols for a much shorter amount of time leading to less ABV and a higher concentration of water and sugars. They were basically sterilizing their water and flavoring it before drinking.


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

[User]
ELI5 why do old men pee in spurts?

Is this avoidable? Or the result of bad health or bad habits?

[Assistant]
Older men are prone to prostate issues. The prostate gland enlarges and partially blocks the urethra making urination more difficult or even painful.

This can cause a frequent need to urinate or urinating in small amounts.

Treatment is available though. There are drugs that help and prostate surgery is relatively routine.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why was lead (Pb) so widely used before people discovered it was toxic?

What properties of lead make it so useful that its in paint, glassware, pipes, etc.?

[Assistant]
It's very common in nature, easily mined, easily processed, very malleable - easy to make things from.
On top of that, it has chemical properties that make it useful in various applications, which were discovered by trial and error over time.


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

[User]
Could we measure happiness with serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins?

A lot of studies use self reporting to find out people's happiness but isn't that not very accurate since there could be different cultural definitions and feelings of happiness? I read the "Geography of Bliss" in high school and the Swiss had reportedly high levels yet their definition of happiness was much more mellow and contented. I realize there are other questions used and not just "how happy are you?" like life satisfaction scale and purpose scale which I skimmed through but I am just wondering wouldn't chemical levels be statistically more accurate? Is it impossible to be sad if your happy hormones (SDOE) are high?

[Assistant]
PhD in neuroscience here.

The answer is no. Also, those aren't hormones, they're neurotransmitters (well, oxytocin is kind of hormone-ish), and there's a big difference between hormones and neurotransmitters. Hormones can have a "general function", neurotransmitters do not. Serotonin, dopamine etc. are not tied to happiness, anyone who tells you that has no idea what they're talking about.

Anyway, if you want to know how happy someone is, asking them how happy they are is going to be about a million times more accurate than any kind of biological marker.


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

[User]
ELI5: How are logic chips (AND/OR/NAND/etc) actually built to work like their chosen logic gate?

Like with an AND gate I understand how it works in that an input of 1 AND 1 make an output of 1, but how do the logic chips actually perform the function? How would you build a logic gate without using logic chips?

[Assistant]
The basic building block of electrical/electronic gates is the transistor. You can think of a transistor as an electrically operated switch. This switch has an input, output and a "switch" (also an input). If the switch is "on" it connects the input to the output, if the switch is "off" the input is disconnected from the output.

By differing configurations of this switch (several transistors connected in different circuit patterns), all logical gates can be constructed.


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

[User]
[Batman] Has anyone in Gotham ever questioned how much physical damage Batman has put goons/henchmen in?

Sure, he won't kill them but surely he's put some into comas or extensive physical abuse that they may have eventually died or had to be hooked on painkillers.

[Assistant]
I saw a comic where some random goon got way deeper into crime because he was just a basic lookout when Batman came in and broke his jaw before stopping the rest of the robbery. He blamed Batman and thought his punishment was unfair.

Batman pointed out that two innocent people had died in that robbery before Batman got there. And he said he if ever found the goon on the wrong side of the law again then he would rip the goon's jaw clean off.


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

[User]
Are moons always smaller than the planets they orbit?

Could there be a planet the size of earth with a moon the size of Jupiter orbiting it? Is it a matter of density or size?

[Assistant]
By definition, a planet is a the dominant body in its orbit around the star. If object A is much bigger than object B, while they share an orbit around their star, then object B can't be a planet, but object A could be.

There's a grey area, where neither A nor B are large enough to have cleared their orbit. This is the case in the Pluto-Charon system. Pluto is clearly the larger of the two, but there are many objects that share the same orbit with Pluto and Charon and Pluto is not big enough to either capture the other objects in its orbit or eject them from the orbit. So Pluto is not a planet.