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

[User] ELI5: Who or what controls the value of currency. For instance why is UK pound more than US dollar?

[Assistant]
Originally, currencies were actual precious metals, like gold and silver coins. For the sake of portability, these were replaced with bank notes - pieces of paper which entitled the bearer to a certain quantity of precious metal if they presented them to the bank. That system is known as the gold standard.

The gold standard was abandoned in the middle of the 20th century. Now we have fiat money, which is money that has value simply because everyone agrees it has value. This gives governments much more control over economies, because they can control the money supply. The biggest difference between 20 real dollars and 20 Monopoly dollars now is that you can use the real dollars to pay taxes.

The exchange value between the major fiat currencies, including the dollar and the pound, was set at a conference in the 1940s. At that time the British economy was considered far more valuable than the US economy, so the pound was worth several dollars. Since then, the US has grown and the exchange rate has narrowed.

The other thing to know is that the value of one currency against another is very carefully managed, and can change the world. The recent growth of China has partly been the result of their governments insistence that their currency be cheaper than the US dollar by a fixed amount, thus making business cheaper to do there. Similarly, Germany is doing so well and Greece so badly partly because their economies use currencies that can't move against one another.


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

[User]
Can you tell me the name of the following principal: Inefficiency of workers benefits managers whose status and compensation is linked proportionally to the number of subordinate who report to them?

It is named after a ~~Nobel prize winning~~ economist active in the 1950s iirc. I want to look it up but have not been able to find anything about it without the name. This person suggested (seriously or sardonicallyIm not sure which) that in an organization in which managers are compensated and have status in part based on the size of the staff that reports to them they will have a self-interest in creating inefficiency among those workers in order to rationalize additional hires that result in additional compensation and/or status for themselves. Who wrote this and does it actually reflect any sort of reality in real world organizations? Thank you.

Edit: Does not seem to match-up with any Nobel winners.

[Assistant]
I think this sounds like what you would describe as empire building, or siloing of an organisation.

More broadly this is an example of an agent principle problem, where an individual has different goals than their employer. A common example of this is ceos who get bonuses in the form of stock options, they therefore want to raise the stock price as much as possible and may do things that short term raise the stock price, but long term hurt the company.

There are a lot of examples of this, probably the most famous one would be Enron, but its pretty common.


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

[User] ELI5: How come sometimes I'm able to sit down and work for hours on end, and other times I can barely look at work at all?

[Assistant]
It's due to levels of neurotransmitters in your brain changing due to large variety of physiological, environmental, and emotional factors. There are likely a lot of neurotransmitters in play that have a huge impact on motivation, but currently the most well-known is one called "Dopamine".

People who have disorders involving dopamine regulation dysfunction (such as Parkinson's, some forms of Depression, MS, etc) have severe disruption in motivation. The lower the dopamine production/uptake, the lower the motivation. They lack what would be considered a normal motivation drive, and typically see improvements in this motivation when undergoing pharmaceutical therapy to increase levels of dopamine.

So what can you do to influence dopamine? Well, the field is still very young and is full of unknowns, but it seems that one way to increase dopamine in healthy individuals is to have them partake in activities they **enjoy**. Exercise also has an effect on dopamine levels and as a result may increase levels of motivation.

So if you're feeling unmotivated, perhaps it'd be wise to spend some time among friends or go for a quick jog/walk/bike ride before returning to your work. It could have a very positive impact.


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

[User]
[Superman] Why does superman need to be extra careful about breaking things?

Humans can easily tear the pages of a book, but that doesn't mean we need to be extra conscious of how much strength we apply while flipping pages in a notebook. Or of how delicate a banana is, so as to not squash it while casually picking one up. Shouldn't superman also be able to use just the appropriate amount of strength without overthinking it?

[Assistant]
Superman is so much stronger than us that it's not like handling the pages of a book, it's more like your whole house is made of kleenex.  If you just brush against the edge of the doorway while walking through, it will be torn apart and you won't even notice that it happened.  Even breathing too hard could tear down a wall.

Now, imagine opening a door.  Did you turn the knob too far?  Not far enough?  Too fast?  Push the door too hard?  You just broke it.


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

[User]
ELI5: What did de Blasio do, that is making NYC cops turn on him?

8============3~

[Assistant] Part of it has to do with what he told a reporter during a one on one interview.  DeBlasio told this reporter that he has been teaching his son Dante, who is bi-racial to be careful around police officers. This led people to think that he is perpetuating the image of the white, racist police officer via the media.


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

[User]
How Do Waterproof Matches Work?

I know that water extinguishes a flame due to water  removing energy from the system, preventing the reaction to go over the activation energy. I don't get how the wax on fireproof matches work. You need  fuel, oxygen  and heat for combustion but I don't see the wax helping any of these 3 factors in water.

[Assistant] Waterproof matches wont keep the match lit underwater. The wax coating just prevents the wood and chemical head from absorbing water. Once struck you will need to keep water away from the burning portion or they will go out.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do we see games as consistently "realistic" graphics when released...yet years later they seem laughably dated?

[Assistant] Because we had nothing better to compare them too (comparing to real life is difficult). When they get really close to realistic, they get put into the "uncanny valley", where our brain tries to determine if it's real or not, whereas older "realistic" games we were just amazed by it and could instantly enjoy.


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

[User] [24] How did Jack Bauer go from a BA in English Lit. To a Master of Science in Criminology? Is this a normal study path that can lead to a career in counter-terrorism?

[Assistant] Yes. Because contrary to popular opinion, a degree in English lit doesn't just make students "smart in English", it also imparts analysis and reasoning skills that is applicable to all areas of employment.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Luke Skywalker gets killed after being hit on the head by that Tusken Raider on Tatooine. How does the fate of the Galaxy change?

Let's imagine that jumpscare Tusken Raider hits Luke a little TOO hard. How does this change the story from this point onwards?

[Assistant] Obi-Wan discovers the body, sighs and communicates with Yoda, who sighs and sends Obi on a damned fool mission to find and train Leia.  He charters a fast freighter (The Outrider) and figures out where Vader's Star Destoryer went.  Expecting to sneak onto the Executer they soon discover the battle station and use the cargo smuggling trick to sneak aboard the Death Star.  He finds where Leia is being held and mind tricks the Imperial officer in charge of the area into releasing her.  Together they along with R2-D2 and Dash Rendar escape the Death Star and lead the story back to it's normal path.  Wedge and Biggs do the Death Star trench run with Porkins who thanks to Obi Wan's manipulating the Force scores the kill shot on the exhaust port.


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

[User]
[MCU] How can beings, whose powers come from a single infinity stone like Wanda or Captain Marvel, compete with Thanos when he has 3+ stones

It doesn't really make sense to me. Their powers derive from a single stone so Thanos possessing that stone alone should make him at least equal. But he would have lost to Captain Marvel and Wanda while having multiple stones in his possession and clearly demonstrates that he knows how to use them so its obviously not a "they are more experienced with their abilities" kind of situation. Even if it were, tahz maybe could hold true against 1 or 2 stones, but with 3+ the raw power alone would negate all differences in skill.

[Assistant]
Thanos just *has* the stones, while those people are *drawing on* on the stones.

Apparently, the power difference between having a machine that manipulates the stones vs having the ability to innately use the stones power makes a big difference.


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

[User]
What is the difference in voltage (or potential voltage) between the earth and space?

For example. If we built a space elevator, it's going to be a very long body extending from the surface of the earth into the farthest reaches of the atmosphere.

An object that long would surely create a significant voltage potential assuming it was ungrounded for the purpose of hypothetical science.

What would the possible voltage potential be from top (space) to bottom (Earth) be?   Would we be able to harness any form of useful energy from such a device?

[Assistant] The tether of the space elevator would touch the ionosphere. The ionosphere is an electrically conducting layer which is charged continuously to ~300 kV with respect to sea level, by thunderstorms anywhere on earth. The ionosphere could deliver ~300 MW of electricity (current 1 kA).


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

[User] ELI5: Is every single sperm cell the same? Does it matters which one fertilizes the egg or every single one from the same batch would generate the same person in the end?

[Assistant] No, every sperm cell contains a random recombination of the fathers genome. The same is true for egg cells. Thats why siblings are generally genetically different, only having 50% of common genes on average.


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

[User]
How did we treat cancer in the past (pre 1900) Did we even know about it?

How did we go about dealing with cancer before radiation treatment. Did we even know that cancer is what was killing some people? When did we learn it was cancer causing the deaths?

[Assistant] They knew about it.  They had no real treatment other than to cut it out.  They wouldn't discover it until it caused problems so usually too late. Leukemia is called white blood because that's how the person would die. So many defective white blood cells that the blood literally turned white. All they could really do was to give it a name.


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

[User] ELI5: How can martial artists (Im thinking karate) chop something like a solid brick in half with just their bare hands?

[Assistant]
There are two components to this; physics and exaggeration.

The first part is the "real" part. Martial artists do actually break things with their hands and feet as a training exercise. If you take a board or a brick and deform it enough it will break. If you hit it with sufficient momentum you'll deform it sufficiently. Getting that amount of momentum is a combination of the mass of the object (for example your hand) and the velocity of that object. So breaking a board is really just a matter of hitting it really hard.

In order to do this with a body part there are a couple of factors that come into play.

Most people don't want to hurt their hand so when they hit a board they'll instinctively pull back at the last second. This reduces the momentum of the hand and then the board won't break. Ironically this tends to hurt more. When you hit a board your hand and the board experience equal and opposite forces. If you actually break the board that force is spread out over the time between when your hand contacts the board and when it breaks. If you don't manage to break the board that force is only spread out over the time it takes the board to bend and bounce back. So your force per time can be much higher and it hurts more. This is why martial artists are trained to "strike through" the target.

The next big issue is aim. If you don't hit the board in the right spot you make it much harder to break. Imagine a board suspended between to holders. It's obviously much harder to break the board if you hit it near one of the holders than if you hit it right between them.

Then there's how you hold your hand. Hands have all kinds of tiny, easily breakable bones. A large part of board breaking training is learning how to hit the board using the strong parts of your hand.

There's also conditioning. If you hit things over and over it not only strengthens your bones and muscles, it also deadens the nerves and makes it hurt less.

Depending on the material it may also be the case that you can't break the board at all, at least not without mangling your hand. Think of a bullet that goes through a board. It may make a hole but the bullet is not going to be bullet shaped when it's done.

Then there's the exaggeration part. Some martial artists just like to show off. There are ways to make a breaking demonstration look much harder than it really is. If you put spacers between boards or bricks they're easier to break since instead of reinforcing each other the weight of the first brick can help break the bricks below them. Not all bricks are created equal either. Some are weak and crumbly. Some bricks are so hard you couldn't break them with a sledge hammer. You'll also notice that people almost always break boards with the grain rather than against the grain.


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

[User] [General] What's the strongest man portable weapon in fiction?

[Assistant]
In *Life, the Universe and Everything*, the supercomputer *Hactar* designed the *ultimate weapon* for the *Silastic Armourfiends of Striterax*. It's a device that connects all stars and makes them go supernova and thus effectively destroying the entire universe. It's very very small and resembles a cricket ball.

The first iteration was designed to be a dud, but a second one was fully functional and almost accidentally set of by *Arthur Dent*.


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

[User]
ELI5:When scientists look for life on other planets, why do they look for things that humans need to survive?

If they are alien, why can't they need other things besides water and/or oxygen? It kind of seems silly to write off planets from having no life just because they don't have things that humans need.

Or do all beings in the universe need the things that we need?

[Assistant]
So imagine you have a basket of rainbow colored Easter eggs.  In this basket there are 9 eggs of different colors.  In the green egg, there is a lot candy.  But there is no candy in the other eggs.  You decide you want to know if there is more candy in other eggs out in the back yard.  You grab another basket and run out back and find tens of billions of rainbow colored Easter eggs.  Wow.  That's a lot of eggs!  You know from experience that the only color of eggs you have that there is candy in is the green egg.  You decide that finding more green eggs is your best chance of getting more candy!

Remember to give your dad the Reese's Pieces.


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

[User]
What is energy?

All of matter is just energy, we look at it closer and closer, and we get to something like quantum foam or the vacuum energy.

Isn't this just a measurement of energy?
It doesn't really tell us what energy is.

So what exactly is energy?

[Assistant]
This is a Big Question. Let me give a few different points of view, very roughly in order of historical development (but all of them are still valid today).

*Energy is a bookkeeping device.* In Newtonian mechanics, given a particular starting point and particular interactions, not every outcome is possible! It turns out to be useful to keep track of certain quantities that *don't change* over time, so they must be the same at the beginning and the end of some process. One such quantity (for appropriate interactions) is energy. If you take one-half the mass of an object times the square of its speed, and add that number up for all objects, and also add a particular quantity called 'potential energy' that depends on the locations of all the objects, that number will always remain constant. The terms you add up will change, but their total will not. In this view, energy is simply this number that stays the same and is useful for deciding what can and can't happen.

*Energy is the conserved quantity associated with time-translation symmetry.* Emmy Noether realized and proved a deep fact about those numbers that don't change in time ('conserved quantities'). They are associated with *symmetries of the laws of physics.* It sounds kind of woo-woo, but you can prove mathematically: because the laws of physics do not change over time, there is a particular number (which you can derive a formula for from the laws of physics) that is constant. That number is the same quantity, energy, from above. It works the other way, too---since we experimentally observe conservation of energy, it follows that the laws of physics are the same over time (within the precision we can measure).

Noether's version of energy generalizes nicely beyond Newtonian mechanics, so you can extend the definition of energy to electromagnetic fields (it turns out electric and magnetic fields store energy) and relativistic mechanics (from whence we get E^2 = m^(2)c^(4) + p^(2)c^(2)).

The full relativistic generalization leads nicely to the most modern view: *energy is (a certain part of) the thing that bends spacetime.* Just like we can think of electric charge as 'the thing that produces electric fields,' we can think of energy as 'the thing that bends spacetime.' More technically, energy is but one part of the stress-energy tensor, which provides the source of spacetime curvature. Indeed, in modern physics, even when ignoring the effects of gravity, you can answer the question 'how much energy is here' by asking how spacetime *would* bend if it could. Whatever stress-energy tensor you get out of the calculation will be conserved and equivalent to the first two definitions of energy. (Weirdly, this way of finding the conserved energy can be easier than finding it directly.)

The first two formulations imply that energy is just a number we calculate---a convenience---and we could do without it if we just plugged along and calculated. The third implies that energy is a real thing that has real, gravitational effects on our world. And those aren't incompatible--they're equivalent!


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

[User] ELI5:Why do some (Cessna 172 for example) planes need a fuel mixture which is adjusted by the pilot, but a cars fuel air mixture is automatic?

[Assistant]
Combustion engines rely on having the correct air to fuel mixture ratio.

The air pressure (and therefore Oxygen amount) at ground level is fairly static, so maintaining the correct air/fuel mixture ratio manually is unneeded.

However, at higher and higher altitudes, the air pressure , and therefore oxygen content lowers, and therefore in order to maintain the correct ratio of air to fuel for combustion *at different altitudes* requires the pilot to be able to set this mixture ratio manually.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] Is Avada Kedavra legally allowed in cases of self-defense?

Just an hour ago someone broke into my house and attacked me! I'm a slightly above-average wizard who used to work as a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher (retired now) and the only thing I could think of was to cast Avada Kedavra. Now I'm thinking maybe that wasn't the best thing to do... "Unforgivable" and all...

I can prove without a doubt that it was in self defense. Do you think the Ministry will allow me this one time, since my life was literally in danger? Or am I going to Azkaban? Please help. :(

[Assistant]
Probably not. Just like in the real-ass world there are laws against using enough force. There were hundreds of ways you coulda dealt with an attacker. If memory serves that particular curse only works if you WANT to kill. You WANT them dead.

Perhaps arguable if you come upon them after murdering your family, but for startled self defense it's hard to argue WHY you could even cast this particular curse. Why did you want the dead? It's arguable death is a very permanent way to make sure they can't hurt you, but there's lots of alternatives for a slightly above average wizard to completely disable an opponent eh?


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do people flick and squirt needles before giving injections?

This might be a movie/film industry only thing (I don't remember a nurse doing this before I received shots). But why do they do it? It seems like they're squirting/wasting quite a bit of medicine out before giving it to the person.

[Assistant]
You don't want to inject air.

It's difficult to fill a syringe without having at least a small air bubble. Putting the needle up and flicking will get any air bubbles in the syringe up to the end, you then push out the bubble and you know when it's all out of the needle when liquid flows through.

Even when you're not injecting it into a person, if the volume measurement needs to be very precise you won't want any air in there to throw it off.

EDIT; Note that the movie version with a large fountain of medicine coming out is dramatization, but the practice is real and much less wasteful.


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

[User] ELI5: How are periodicals like National Enquirer allowed to use headlines like "David Bowie Actually Died of HIV"? Isn't that defamation or slander?

[Assistant] In the US (and even in England under their old, *notoriously* pro-plaintiff libel law), the general rule is that you cannot be sued for defaming a dead person. Defamation law is to protect the reputation of the living; the dead don't have a right to their good name.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did they build Medieval bridges in deep water?

I have only the barest understanding of how they do it NOW, but how did they do it when they were effectively hand laying bricks and what not? Did they have basic diving suits? Did they never put anything at the bottom of the body of water?

[Assistant] They built them in air, not underwater. First they blocked off the water around where they were going to dig and build using what are called Cofferdams or Caissons made of pile driven wood or stone and pumped out by bucket, dug the foundation and built to the water line and then removed the temporary structure. Pressurized versions are relatively new but can go deeper but the original idea is almost 2 millennia old and would have been used for major bridges during that time.


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

[User] ELI5 : I dont know what to refer to it as, maybe a phenomenon, but if you look at something spinning like a fast fan and it looks like it slows down and goes in the opposite direction, despite obviously not doing so?

[Assistant] This is a phenomenon called 'aliasing'. It happens when your brain can't keep track of which blade on the fan is which, or how far it had spun since your last perception of it. It also happens in film, when you would see spokes on wheels, or rotors on aircraft seem to spin at a much slower speed, or even backwards. In this case, it's due to the frame rate of the camera being close to some factor of the rpm of the wheel multiplied by the number of spokes.


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

[User] ELI5: Why do pictures that have the same number of pixels have different file sizes?

[Assistant]
It depends on the type of file.

But most file types that contain pictures are compressed. Some pictures can be compressed more than others - if there are large parts of the picture that are the same colour, for example, then it's not necessary to store the colour of each individual pixel, and space can be saved by storing only the changes from one pixel to the next.


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

[User]
[John Wick]What makes John so special?

The guys just killed some of my men and Im planning on gutting the fucker; hes just one man, right? Cant be too hard to kill? Whys everyone so scared of him?

[Assistant]
There's nothing "special" about Wick. He isn't immortal, he isn't super-powered, and he hasn't made a deal with some infernal god of death.

He's just ... good.

The man is a savant. In the same way some are the best in the world at violin, or woodworking, or chess, John Wick is the best in the world at killing men that would rather kill him first. He is tough, resilient, smart, stealthy, and accurate. He gains a significant advantage from his reputation - it lets him avoid those that are afraid of them, rather than having to fight and kill them before getting to his target - but he *built* that reputation through years of skillful murder.

A lot of things play into that skill. Genetics, upbringing, training. But at the end of the day, he's just a man that's very good at what he does, and what he does ~~isn't very nice~~ is murder the ever loving shit out of anyone who looks funny at his dog or touches his car.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why civilian authorities were involved in the Fort Hood shooting yesterday

I only read a little bit on this yesterday, but from what I gather the short of it is:

*Guy starts shooting people
*Base (and near by town?) go on lock down
*MPs and SWAT corner the guy
*Guy shoots himself

My question is why was the SWAT team there? In a spot that houses one of the most lethal fighting forces in the world, whose job it is to protect the country from a full out invasion, why were the soldiers unable to deal with the threat of a single shooter?

[Assistant]
most likely because 99% of military firearms are stored in arms rooms (giant 4" thick steel(?) door), with ammo being stored at a separate facility (ammo supply point).

to mobilize a unit/company/platoon to go fight this, you would have to not only get authorization to open the arms room (or have one of like, 3 people available who know the combo), then get transportation to the ASP, then find your way to that shooter. far too long. police, MPs, SWAT all have weapons readily available and are made for quick reaction.


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

[User]
[Marvel/DC] What happens to children who obtain superpowers?

I've never read a comic book in my life but after watching Civil War where Tony Stark lets a high schooler fight, i wondered, what happens to elementary school-aged kids  that happen to obtain superpowers? Would they still go to the same school? If their parents and friends are still alive, would they be allowed to see them? Would they be trained to use their powers to fight supervillains once they get older?  What would people like Superman or Batman do if they encountered a street urchin orphan who had superpowers?

[Assistant]
The second and third season of Young Justice (DC) sort of deal with this. Basically, a bunch of humans get a metagene activated that unlocks superpowers in them. Examples from the original Runaways team (in the show) include Static Shock and Longshadow if Im not wrong. Electrical powers for static and the ability to create a giant hardlight form for Longshadow.

They get kidnapped and abused, basically. There are initiatives to help and raise them as productive and happy individuals, but power is corrupting and they usually get stolen for nefarious uses.


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

[User]
ELI5: The inferno section of The Divine Comedy

and a summary of each level or ring?

[Assistant]
Dante is a pretty cool guy whose beloved Beatrice bites the dust is taken to the afterlife. Hell is Dante's first stop.

* Level 1: Limbo. Unvirtuous Pagans and the unbaptized. Didn't get eternal punishment, but didn't get reward because they never accepted Jesus. Lots of Classical characters are chillin' in Limbo. Dante continues, guided by the Roman poet Virgil.

* Level 2: Lust. Lustful souls are blown about by eternal strong winds representing the power of lust to blow us about in life. He meets Cleopatra and Paris and Helen of Troy and other lustful figures.

* Level 3: Gluttony. Cerberus stands guard over the gluttonous. They lie in slush brought down by relentless icy rains. They are meant to represent the cold, empty, meaningless sensuality of their lives. They are blind and unaware of their surroundings.

* Level 4: Greed. The greedy and miserly are meant to push large weights around (sometimes depicted as large bags of money) and joust using these. The god of wealth Pluto, or Plutus, watches over them.

* Level 5: Anger. The angry/wrathful are punished by being forced to fight one another for space on the surface of the river. The downtrodden lie on the bed of the river surrounded by inky water.

* After this, the punishments of active rather than passive sins are carried out in the city of Dis. The walls are guarded by fallen angels, who refuse to let Dante in. An angel from heaven comes and tells them to let Dante in and they do.

* Level 6: Heresy. The heretics are trapped in flaming tombs. Two of them chat with Dante.

* Level 7: Violence. Divided into three rings. 1). Outer ring: Violent to people and property. Forced to stand in a river of boiling blood and fire. The more violent you are, the deeper you stand. Alexander the Great is dipped up to his eyebrows. 2). Middle ring: Suicides. Transformed into thorny bushes and trees. These trees are the only ones who will not be resurrected for the final judgment. They renounced their bodies by killing themselves. 3). Inner ring: Violent against God, usurpers, and sodomites. The inner ring is a desert of flaming sand with fiery flakes falling from the sky. Blasphemers lie on the sand. Usurpers sit. Sodomites wander in groups.

* Level 8: Fraud. 10 pockets of stone are cut into one large space. Bridges connect them. They are for different types of fraud. 1). "Panderers and Seducers" are whipped by demons and forced to march endlessly. 2). Flatterers are forced to sit in human poo, meant to represent the useless words they produced. 3). Those who commit simony have their heads stuffed into the rock and flames burn the soles of their feet. 4). Sorcerers and false prophets have their heads turned around and walk backwards everywhere. 5). Corrupt politicians are immersed in boiling pitch, supposed to represent their sticky nature and dark words. 6). Hypocrites walk around with robes made of lead covered in gold, meant to represent their gilded nature. 7). Thieves are guarded by a dragon-monster and are tormented by snakes and lizards. 8). Fraudulent advisors burn in individual flames. 9). A demon uses a sword to wound and chop up the "Sowers of Discord". 10). Various falsifiers are subjected to various diseases.

* Level 9: Treachery. Divided into 4 concentric circles. 1).Treachery against family ties, the punished are covered in ice up to their faces. 2). Traitors to political entities, Dante encounters a man gnawing on the head of a former compatriot. 3). Traitors to the guest-host relationship. Forced to lie flat in the ice with everything but their faces covered. 4). Traitors to their lords and masters. Punished by being covered completely in ice, in various distorted positions.

* At the center of Hell is Satan, and his domain is those who commit a personal treachery against God. A beast with three heads and six wings, he is trapped in ice. He beats his wings to try and free himself, and constantly cries from his six eyes. Brutus and Cassius are in the left and right mouths. In the center mouth is Judas Iscariot, being constantly chewed by Satan and having his back flayed by his claws. It's portrayed as an inverted trinity.

Dante descends below Satan through the center of the Earth to Purgatory and the narrative continues.


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

[User]
[The Matrix Sequels] Was there any really plausible defense for Zion, absent of a messiah?

Based on the available technology and general awareness of the imminent threat, was there any real defense of Zion that could have been mounted successfully?

The machines seemed to have a tremendous advantage in military and destructive might. Is there anything Zion conceivably could have done to preserve themselves, apart of Neo ending the war with the machines himself?

[Assistant]
Not really. Zion exists only as part of the failsafe the Machines put in place to restart the Matrix when it becomes unstable. In order for the plan to work, the One needs to leave the Matrix and enter the real world and develop a connection with humanity. When the time came that the Matrix began to fail, the Machines would destroy everyone in Zion and then give the One a choice, go to the Source and restart the Matrix and get to free a handful of humans to restart Zion, or let the Matrix fail and all humans plugged in would die and since Zion was destroyed, humanity would cease to exist.

The Humans could put up a good fight, but ultimately they are doomed from the start. The Machines would always have systems in place to keep attacking and eventually winning. If we look at the last Battle of Zion, the Humans were almost finished, it was only the EMP that stopped the first wave of Machines and while it bought them a reprieve, it also cost them all their heavy defense equipment. They were reduced to a handful of hand held weapons, and the second wave would have made short work of them. Even if they were able to hold off that wave, the Machines would have more up their sleeves. Perhaps they would use heavy bombardments to pound them into dust before sending in a clean up crew. Maybe they would have used chemical or biological weapons to finish them off. Hell in a worst case scenario they would have no issues resorting to nuclear weapons.

No there is no way for Zion to win on their own. The game was rigged from the start.


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

[User]
What makes the moon so reflective?

Is there a reason why the moon is so reflective that it lights up the earth at night?  Does the earth reflect light onto the moon in the same way?

[Assistant]
Actually, the Moon's not very reflective at all. Its average albedo, the proportion of incoming light that it reflects, is only about .12, which is similar to that of asphalt. However, it doesn't reflect equally in all directions. Like many surfaces, it is more effective at reflecting light that's shining directly on it, which means that its surface brightness will be significantly greater during or near a full moon than otherwise. The reason it looks so bright at night is there's nothing else in the night sky anywhere near as bright. Consider what an asphalt surface in full daylight would look like if you could see it at night-- it would be quite bright indeed.

The Moon does receive reflected light from Earth--more than the Earth receives from the Moon, since the Earth has a higher albedo, around 0.3. This is called Earthshine, and it lets us see the surface of the Moon even when the Sun isn't shining directly on it.


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

[User]
ELI5: Where did all the money go during the great depression?

I've always wondered...

[Assistant]
If you have a rock that other people are willing to pay $1000 for (part of a pet rock craze). You have $1000 worth of rock as part of your net worth.

One day people are only willing to pay you $5 for that rock (pet rock mania over).

Your net worth is decreased by $995, even though nothing physical have changed.


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

[User]
Why doesn't Tony make suits for the other Avengers?

He made one for Spiderman, why not make one for the other Avengers to enhance their abilities?

[Assistant]
Summary of memorandums from Section heads of Stark Industries reguarding PROJECT: IRON AVENGERS
To: Tony Stark

Finance Department - Tony, we at Stark Industries fully support the work that you do with the Avengers and on your own in your Ironman persona. We would like to remind you that the extraordinary costs of development, testing, production, and support for your own suit of Ironman armor. You don't want to know the bottom line, but it has a lot of zeros in it. Many, many zeros.

Research and Development - Given the diverse skill sets that you are asking us to augment we believe that you are not looking at a reduction of problems, but a exponential expansion. We cannot easily adapt technology from one Iron Avenger to the next. You are looking at a separate R&D team for every member. The Materials team has many questions about what you want to use for the IronHulk and IronThor, we don't think that there is anything in existence that would be suitable for those projecst.

Security - Tony, we know that you are aware of your previous "incidents" with loosing tech and it being mis-appropriated by other agents that you were not thrilled about. If you had multiple versions of armored agents out there without your direct control, can you see any way to stop this happening again? We would like to remind you that Agent Romavoff is a former Russian agent, whom you first encountered when she was sent to spy on you. We request that you stop thinking with "little Tony" again in reguards to Agent Widow.


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

[User] ELI5: Why is Europe considered a separate continent from Asia?

[Assistant]
It's a cultural, historical reason.

Continents are pretty hard to put a definition down and depending who you ask the word means a different thing.

Some say they are tectonic, in which case there should be 8 or 9 continents with Russia cut down the middle (damn Russia at it again)

Some say it is just large connected land masses in which case it should be 3 or 4 continents

The real answer is there isn't a strict definition, and the word simply means whatever you define it yourself to mean.

Historically and culturally Europe and Asia have been split, through religions, ethnic groups, political structure, scientific belief, language origins, as well as other things

For instance back during ancient Greece, pre-Alexander the Great, Greece controlled what is now Greece, as well as that small European part of Turkey. Persia controlled the rest of Turkey and a lot of land to the East of that. During that time that division between the West and the East was formed.


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

[User]
ELI5: How are caricaturists able to reduce a complex human face to a simple drawing such that it is readily identifiable as the subject to others?

I'm always amazed out how a cartoon of a famous person can look uncannily like that person with just a few strokes of the pen/brush. Are there certain facial features that the brain looks for as a shortcut for identifying people?

[Assistant]
Man, the brain is fine-tuned to look for faces and identify them. It's the reason people can look at like, electrical outlets or something, and see a face.

What caricaturists do is take the most easily identifiable parts of an individual face, and exaggerate them to crazy levels.


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

[User]
If I run electricity through a steak, will it move?

Assuming DC and other best possible settings; also what would those be? How old could it be? As in, would it happen if I bought a fairly fresh stake from the store?

This question has absolutely nothing to do with scaring the everlasting shit out of kids coming to my door.

[Assistant] Most likely not. The cycle that causes the muscle to contract requires ATP in order work. The electrical impulse just allows the muscle to contract. At this point in the steak's life, it most likely has no ATP left.


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

[User] [avatar] what happens if a fire lord dies without leaving an heir?

[Assistant]
I assume it's just like any royal family. If there's not a direct child, it goes to a cousin or uncle or some such thing.

Unless the fire nation is wiped out (which has bigger problems then the heir), they'll be some distant relation they can pull out somewhere.


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

[User]
[RDM BSG] So, Galactica found a really great habitable planet, which is great, but now everyone wants to settle on it and dump our technology and medicine to live among the primitives. Can I not do that? Can I just...go with the Cylons, or something?

Seriously. Everyones lost their minds. How do no antibiotics help stop another Cylon uprising? Arent we chill with the Cylons now? Theyve got some cool shit on that Basestar. Why the frak are we dumping everything into the sun?

[Assistant]
Don't let the comparative luxury of the Galactica, Pegasus, or even the Cloud 9 fool you. The conditions in the rest of the fleet were awful from the beginning, and only got worse after New Caprica and the years of constant running. People were eager to see a blue sky, feel real gravity, and live in a place that wasn't a few square meters of bare metal and malfunctioning technology. The need to be free of those shackles was a powerful one.

I think it's rather obvious that even if one person named Adama said "nah, no cities", the rest of the human population didn't quite listen. Settlements, farming communities, and other infrastructure happened, it was just a long and hard road. And 150,000 years later, very little survives. Not to mention the fact that modern archaeology probably hasn't looked in exactly the right place yet. (I have a running theory/headcanon that resistance to the zero-tech decision was immediate and there was quite a bit of bickering and drama similar to everything we saw on the fleet. But given the alternative was more time spent with a fleet that everyone hated, the obvious winners were those on Adama's side)

The other humans might be cool with you leaving with the mechanical Cylons, but the cylons might not be cool with you joining them. After all, life support systems can be quite inefficient, and shutting them down might benefit the basestar in ways you never expected.


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

[User]
[ Marvel Comics ] Did Beta Ray Bill get a downgrade when getting Stormbreaker?

If Beta Ray Bill beat Thor twice before getting stormbreaker, what was the point of it if he was stronger than Thor anyway and apparently got weaker since he got Thor's power?

[Assistant] Stormbreaker magical abilities don't replace his cybernetic enhancements \- it's not like Jane Foster or Erik Masterson, who get transformation into asgardian form, Bill just gets nifty cape and chainmail. Bill doesn't really even need Stormbreaker to be a badass, he uses it as a sign of his sworn friendship with Thor and respect for Asgard. When he briefly lost his worthiness \- when he became too driven to slay Galactus and did some shady shit \- he still was a powerhouse, capable of bitchslapping heralds of Galactus.


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

[User]
ELI5: Considering Chess provides perfect information of its board state and has zero randomness, how come the game isn't 'solved' yet?

It seems that there are still chess bots/AI being developed and being improved until now. Seeing as how all possible actions can be calculated and saved in a database ahead of time, why isn't the game solved by just 1 Chess Bot that has all the best moves to win/draw the game everytime?

[Assistant] There are far too many possible actions that we couldn't get close to calculating and storing them all. The number of possible board positions is somewhere in the same region as the number of atoms in the Milky Way galaxy.


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

[User]
[DC] Would Superman obey the law if he was sentenced to death?

Let's say superman killed a villain on accident and turned himself in to the justice system. But he ends up getting a Judge who has it out for him, and the jury doesn't like him either or is secretly paid off by a villain. So superman is legally sentenced to death.

Would he obey the law and allow himself to be executed? Maybe even find some green kryptonite to help the process along?

And if he doesn't. Instead deciding to blow off the case. Would Batman go after him to bring him to justice?

[Assistant] Okay, here's the thing. Superman is the most widely known superhero in the world. And in some places off world. He is seen as a beacon of hope and justice. There is no scenario where he would be sentenced to death for manslaughter. HOWEVER, If we consider a scenario where that did happen, no, he would not. If it was truly an accident, he would work with law enforcement and the U.S. (or elsewhere) government to find a reasonable solution for that. Plus, he has the backing of the Justice League, Titans, Teen Titans, etc... who would help and fight for him. Batman, of all people would be able to verify if it was an accident, or Wonder Woman with her lasso of truth. Best case scenario, they all convince the government to back off and he mourns his mistake, apologies to the family and moves on. Worst case scenario, he quits being Superman. Superman is all about law and justice, but not a fanatic, or suicidal.  He does have a son to take care of and a wife, and he is not just going to leave them.


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

[User]
Is it possible for black holes to lose their "black hole" status?

If a black hole eventually radiates it's mass away through hawking radiation, can it get to the point where it does not meet it's schwarzchild radius, and loses it's "Nothing that passes it's event horizon, not even light, can return" property?

[Assistant]
Black holes can only have masses much greater than the Planck mass. A black hole evaporates through Hawking radiation until its mass starts to near the Planck mass. Around that, full quantum gravity takes over and you cannot simply speak of a standard black hole anymore. There are a couple things that can happen:

- the black hole becomes some stable (i.e. not evaporating anymore) object with mass ~ Planck, called a "remnant"
- the black hole completely disappear leaving only particles (which have all mass << Planck)

The second is considered much more likely in general. The details however depend on your preferred theory of quantum gravity.


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

[User] ELI5: Why does smaller pieces of wood burning easier than logs when starting a fire?

[Assistant] Increased surface area means more places where wood can turn into flame - where heat, fuel, and oxygen are all in the same place at the same time. The wood only burns at the surface, so the more surface there is, the more burning happens.


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

[User]
ELI5: Is there actual dangers to using titanium dioxide in tampons?

I found a TikTok talking about L Organic Tampons and how they have titanium dioxide in them for coloring. I wanted to do more research before just jumping and following this narrative blindly. Overall, what i know is there is two types of titanium dioxide but now the food grade is considered unfit for Skittles. So, why would they use an ingredient that can be considered cariogenic and cause reproductive issues with tampons? Is this just a big conspiracy someone is trying to push?

[Assistant]
The places where we have seen health issues related to titanium oxide had large amounts of titanium oxide dust in the air all the time. Workers at these factories have had increased cases of lung issues including lung cancer. But we have not seen evidence of issues touching or even eating titanium oxide. And the amount of titanium oxide in a tampon that you get exposed to is way lower then the levels we have seen cause any health issues. Because of this the health authorities have approved the sale of tampons with titanium oxide within a limit.

On the other hand there is no benefit to using titanium oxide in tampons other then the color. And the mining, refining and factories using titanium oxide does cause environmental issues and health risks for their employees. So it is indeed a good idea to stray away from tampons with titanium oxide even though they do not cause any harm to yourself.


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

[User]
ELI5: Why do grape flavored things not taste like grape?

With most candies, sodas, sweet things, etc, they taste at least vaguely like what they are supposed to. Lemon tastes like lemon, orange tastes like orange, strawberry tastes like strawberry, banana tastes like bananas... you get the point.
But grape... grape flavored things never tasted like it. The only "real" grape flavor to me is a) actual grapes or b) that real concord grape juice.
If flavorists and food scientists can make every flavor taste how it is supposed to, why can't they seem to get it right on grape?

[Assistant]
They can't make *every* flavor. Since they're creating them artificially, some flavors will be less accurate than others.

IMO, lime and watermelon are two other natural flavors that they can't properly reproduce.


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

[User]
[DC] What was Superman going to call himself?

Lois tends to come up with "Superman." Was Clark going to go by another handle?

Are there other heroes who wanted to be called one thing and ended up being called something else?

[Assistant] I doubt he had anything in mind. It's not like Batman, who went around spreading his own legend. Clark was just being Clark and saving people. You see it really drawn out in Smallville, how he just never thinks to do any branding.


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

[User]
[Star Wars] Top Three Darth masters in history?

If you were going to give the Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt (or Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Napoleon) of the Darth masters who would they be?

Let's do Jedi masters while were here.

I am only a movie watcher so when I popped on the wiki and saw a near endless list of Darth masters I got intrigued and want to read about them. Got too many books in my to-read list to start on the books but I want to poke around on the wiki and am looking for some good interesting places to start. So feel free to recommend some other wiki stuff to read in general...

[Assistant] What about Darth Nihilus (from KOTOR 2)?  Although the final confrontation with him in KOTOR 2 is not particularly noteworthy, the fact that he was able to absorb the life force of the entire biosphere of planets using the dark side of the force definitely stands out in terms of raw power.


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

[User]
How can obsidian be more smooth and sharp than honed steel?

I understand that it is glass, and something like steel is a somewhat crystalline, ordered structure. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but my current level of understanding makes the idea of glass being sharper than metal seem...well, backwards.

[Assistant]
Steel is almost always composed of very many separate crystals, rather than one large one.
When steel fractures, it typically fractures along the uneven joins between septate crystals.
Obsidian contains almost no crystals large enough to affect the material's fracture properties and it is for this reason it breaks smoothly and sharply. Because obsidian lacks crystals, it does not break along lines of weakness in the material, it just fractures along the lines of the stress that caused the fracture. This is also why obsidian and similar materials show conchoidal fractures.
When you look at the shape of some fractured obsidian, you are looking at the shape of the shockwave that cracked it. When you look at the shape of some fractured steel, you are looking partly at the shape of the shockwave that fractured it, but mostly at the lines of weakness between the steel's imperfections and the joins between it's crystals.


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

[User] [40k] Is it possible to torture an ork?

[Assistant]
Orks don't process pain the way that a human does. They feel it, in the sense that one of their sensory inputs includes physical damage done to their body, but it doesn't impact his ability to act nearly as much, and it doesn't have the psychological effect. Because it doesn't have the same psychological effect, purely pain-based torturing is likely to be ineffective.

There are probably psychological techniques that are effective, though. They don't generally have a fear of death, or even a philosophical awareness of the concept, but they do have wants (fightin'), needs (fightin'), and desires (more dakka, for fightin'). Surprisingly, isolation techniques that remove social contact may actually be more effective against Orks that more "normal" species. Take away his ability to express his aggression, and other individuals to compare himself against, and his existence becomes meaningless. Orks don't fear fighting, but they do fear not fighting if they can be made to understand the concept.

Of course, torture for its own sake is not always the most efficient use of the Emperor's vast but finite resources. Most torture conducted by humans has a direct goal (as opposed to what the Dark Eldar do), such as extracting information. In this case, domination may be more effective than straight-up torture. Showing yourself to be stronger, tougher, and larger than the Ork will earn his fear and respect and makes him more compliant to commands. This isn't easy, as Orks view themselves as inherently superior to other species, but if accomplished it makes them easy to manipulate.

In any case, it is far preferable to capture Gretchen for interrogation. They are smarter, so they are actually capable of understanding questions and forming coherent responses. They are sniveling cowards, so it doesn't take much to get them to talk. And you can pack like twenty of them in a supply closet, and feed all of them with one piece of beef jerky per day, so logistics are simpler. The only problem is that they're difficult to capture alive, on account of Orks using them as cover, minefield sweepers, field rations, napkins, shoes, etc.


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

[User]
[Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine] Why they don't use the helmets?

Seems really careless for a group so well prepared and dogmatic.

Edit: I'm talking specifically about the PC game.

[Assistant]
In addition to what others have said, Space Marines have genetically modified organs which give them almost supernatural capabilities.  Could be that the planet they are on has an atmosphere that Space Marines can breathe in without their helmets because of their genetically super lungs.

Sgt.'s and other commanders will also occasionally remove their helmets as a sign of confidence and brazenness (removing protection in the midst of battle) in order to inspire their soldiers.


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

[User]
[WH40K] Can a planet choose to self-exterminatus?

Say, for example: A tyranid fleet is incoming, the genestealer cult is in full swing and causing havoc and reinforcements from the Imperium will not be coming. It's not a matter if this world is going to be consumed, it's a matter of when.

If I'm a big shot and effectively lead the planet, can I give a great big 'Fuck you!' to the  Tyranids and pre-emptively destroy the planet before they get here? Would it not be better to utterly destroy all life on a planet than let the Tyranids consume it? Or better yet, lure them in so they get as much biomass onto the planet as possible and then destroy it, taking a chunk of the Tyranid fleet with it!

So, can planetary governers (or whoever is in charge) choose to self-exterminatus if the contents of the planet are so valuable that they should never get into the hands of a species like the Tyranids?

[Assistant] It's fairly unlikely that the ability to destroy a planet will ever be placed in the hands of an individual planetary governor. Useful worlds are the currency of the Imperium, and destroying one is an incredibly serious matter. A simple governor can't be trusted to know the difference between a salvageable situation and a lost cause. And even assuming the governor has perfect judgement, there could be others around waiting for a chance to get access to it. Having planet destroying weapons lying around is just asking for rebels, chaos cultists, or various other undesirables getting their hands on it and using it against the Imperium. When such a weapon falling into the hands of an enemy can change the course of a war, they're simply better off in the hands of those that are most trusted to perform the Emperor's will.


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

[User]
How seriously is the golden rule taken in modern philosophy?

I ask as someone who's never quite been convinced by deontology, utilitarianism, or virtue ethics. All of them make ethics seem too abstract, as almost otherworldly Ideals pressing down on us and demanding our attention. Forgive me, but it all seems a little mystical. More realistic, it appears to me, is the notion of reciprocity: I won't harm you if you don't harm me, I will treat you respectfully and fairly if you treat me respectfully and fairly, I'll help you if you help me etc. If we universalise these ideals within a group, community, or society, it appears to me we have a pretty solid, even objective source of ethics; essentially, if people wish to live well in a society, those people ought to agree to treat each other well. Or have I just argued myself into contractarianism?

[Assistant]
I think Kant views his ethics as an explicit development of The Golden Rule, in the Critique of Practical Reason he says as much.

>It is a very beautiful thing to do good to men from love to them and from sympathetic good will, or to be just from love of order; but this is not yet the true moral maxim of our conduct which is suitable to our position amongst rational beings as men, when we pretend with fanciful pride to set ourselves above the thought of duty, like volunteers, and, as if we were independent on the command, to want to do of our own good pleasure what we think we need no command to do. We stand under a discipline of reason and in all our maxims must not forget our subjection to it, nor withdraw anything therefrom, or by an egotistic presumption diminish aught of the authority of the law (although our own reason gives it) so as to set the determining principle of our will, even though the law be conformed to, anywhere else but in the law itself and in respect for this law. Duty and obligation are the only names that we must give to our relation to the moral law. We are indeed legislative members of a moral kingdom rendered possible by freedom, and presented to us by reason as an object of respect; but yet we are subjects in it, not the sovereign, and to mistake our inferior position as creatures, and presumptuously to reject the authority of the moral law, is already to revolt from it in spirit, even though the letter of it is fulfilled.

>With this agrees very well the possibility of such a command as: Love God above everything, and thy neighbour as thyself. * For as a command it requires respect for a law which commands love and does not leave it to our own arbitrary choice to make this our principle. Love to God, however, considered as an inclination (pathological love), is impossible, for He is not an object of the senses. The same affection towards men is possible no doubt, but cannot be commanded, for it is not in the power of any man to love anyone at command; therefore it is only practical love that is meant in that pith of all laws. To love God means, in this sense, to like to do His commandments; to love one's neighbour means to like to practise all duties towards him. But the command that makes this a rule cannot command us to have this disposition in actions conformed to duty, but only to endeavour after it. For a command to like to do a thing is in itself contradictory, because if we already know of ourselves what we are bound to do, and if further we are conscious of liking to do it, a command would be quite needless; and if we do it not willingly, but only out of respect for the law, a command that makes this respect the motive of our maxim would directly counteract the disposition commanded. That law of all laws, therefore, like all the moral precepts of the Gospel, exhibits the moral disposition in all its perfection, in which, viewed as an ideal of holiness, it is not attainable by any creature, but yet is the pattern which we should strive to approach, and in an uninterrupted but infinite progress become like to. In fact, if a rational creature could ever reach this point, that he thoroughly likes to do all moral laws, this would mean that there does not exist in him even the possibility of a desire that would tempt him to deviate from them; for to overcome such a desire always costs the subject some sacrifice and therefore requires self-compulsion, that is, inward constraint to something that one does not quite like to do; and no creature can ever reach this stage of moral disposition. For, being a creature, and therefore always dependent with respect to what he requires for complete satisfaction, he can never be quite free from desires and inclinations, and as these rest on physical causes, they can never of themselves coincide with the moral law, the sources of which are quite different; and therefore they make it necessary to found the mental disposition of one's maxims on moral obligation, not on ready inclination, but on respect, which demands obedience to the law, even though one may not like it; not on love, which apprehends no inward reluctance of the will towards the law. Nevertheless, this latter, namely, love to the law (which would then cease to be a command, and then morality, which would have passed subjectively into holiness, would cease to be virtue) must be the constant though unattainable goal of his endeavours. For in the case of what we highly esteem, but yet (on account of the consciousness of our weakness) dread, the increased facility of satisfying it changes the most reverential awe into inclination, and respect into love; at least this would be the perfection of a disposition devoted to the law, if it were possible for a creature to attain it.

>* This law is in striking contrast with the principle of
     private happiness which some make the supreme principle of
     morality. This would be expressed thus: Love thyself above
     everything, and God and thy neighbour for thine own sake.


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

[User]
ELI5: How do CAPTCHA's work?

How does typing a few letters distinguish a human from a machine?

[Assistant] the theory behind it is that a human can decipher the letters while a machine due to it being horrible at recognising jumbled words they can not decipher the message making it impossible for it to get into past the captcha. computers are getting better and better though so captchas are getting harder and harder to decipher by humans.


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

[User]
[Doctor Who]Are weeping angels aware of their surroundings while theyre being observed?

When someone is looking at a weeping angel, does the angel just cease to exist or are they still conscious and aware of whats going on around them?

[Assistant]
Yes and no. A quant is a meaurement of time so small it is literally impossible to measure any distance between one and the next. It's the frame rate of the universe. (Roughly 10^^-43 seconds. ) Despite that, things still happen between quants that we can't see. A photon moves about 10^^-31 in that time. That's 10,000 Planck lengths! We infer that it went from point A to point B by the shortest possible route but there is literally no way for us to look between the frames to double check. Maybe it does a barrel roll where we can't see.

The angels move and sense the world around them in the moments between time. This means they are often reorienting themselves because, unlike a photon, people move in unpredictable ways. (We definitely do barrel rolls.) They live their life like they were an epileptic at a rave alternating between frenetic movement and paralysis. But they can always 'see'.

An angel inhabits an image. That image is often a statue but could be a photograph or painting or video. How they make that image move from place to place or animate its features is impossible to tell, it happens between the Planck lengths we cannot observe. It's undoubtedly a quantum manipulation of probability. But it is through that image's ocular lenses or representation thereof that the angel observes reality even when still and observed. So the image will always have eyes. This is why, when there are multiple angels, many of them will maintain a pose with their arm or hands covering their eyes, so that they don't observe each other and end the intermediate distance between them.

(BTW, if we assume that an angel cannot travel faster than a photon, they are limited to 6.6 meters per second. About eight feet, 2.64 m in the time it takes to blink.)

Finally, angels feed on observed time, which is to say a sentient creature's timeline is like air to them. They need that observed space in order for them to alter the image they inhabit between the moments. Left alone they suffocate and become immobile. Hopefully they aren't conscious in this state. If they somehow ended up trapped observing each other, they would feed off each others' timeline into eternity conscious and paralyzed.

A follow-up question might be, how did the weeping angels come to be?


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

[User] Why some south american plants produce curare alkaloids, if those alkaloids are not absorbed via GI route and are only effective via parenteral injection?

[Assistant]
Alkaloids are most commonly produced to protect the plant from parasites or animals eating the plant, but can have other roles as well (it's not a well settled question, in part because there are a LOT of different alkaloids).

It's not uncommon for alkaloids to have very different effects depending on what species ingests them - we see this with cocoa, for example, which is fine for human consumption but poison for cats and dogs.

I don't know the original biological role of curare alkaloids, but it's possible the organisms they're protecting against do not have the same barrier we do in the GI tract preventing the poison from entering the body (into the blood or hemolymph or whatever is relevant for the organism). Or the plant may just be relying on the alkaloid tasting bad, even if it isn't actually poisonous for the animals.


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

[User]
[Star Trek] Can the Borg innovate or can they only advance by absorbing the technological advances of other species?

Does the Borg have an R&D sector?

[Assistant]
There are limits to the amount the Borg cannot innovate new strategy.  There is a queen, and the limit of the strategy ends at what the queen deems a good plan.  Because the queen has selfish reasons to remain alive, it limits the overall extent of the plans of the Borg.

Meaning.

Once the Borg has mastered time travel.

Go back in time against the humans, Vulcans, Romulans, etc. Before those species are able to develop light speed travel and assimilate them now.

The Queen wants to protect her own narrative and that limits the choices for the Borg to take further domination.


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

[User]
Where did the houses go?

I know they didn't "go" anywhere, but I'm curious how there's not enough houses all of a sudden? Like, just a handful of years ago there wasn't a housing shortage, and I don't believe the population has grown by an unexpected amount.

I've heard that it's single family homes being turned into rentals, but then wouldn't you expect there would be *pleanty* of rentals available right now? And there's a shortage of those too.

I've also heard that companies (BLACKROCK?) buying houses and leaving them vacant, but when I drive through my neighborhood I don't see vacant houses by any meaningful amount.

Is it the eviction/foreclosure moratoriums? Like people who would normally live with roommates have been living alone without paying rent/mortgage?

I'm just wondering how we can go from having enough houses to not-enough houses in such a short time. Where did they go?

[Assistant]
"Where do they go" is an appropriate question, with the wrong subject. Of course houses don't just move. But people do.

To put it a bit differently, the housing shortage was never about there not being enough housing in general, but there not being enough housing *in certain (high demand) areas*.

And it's not a particularly new phenomenon. It's generally true that most of these places have very small vacancy rates though.

There are certainly factors that exacerbate this temporarily, but broadly speaking it's the result of urbanisation that has gone on for decades if not centuries. A tad less broadly speaking, it happens because the influx of people in the areas where people want to move to, like New York, Boston, etc. is much greater than the increase in housing supply and has been for a while. Demand goes up, supply doesn't, you get what people perceive as a shortage.

This has indeed slowed down a tad during the pandemic, but we're just seeing the trend continue.


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

[User] ELI5: How does sexual arousal work? How do humans get aroused by looking at a picture? How does it trigger?

[Assistant] Humans haven't evolved out of the mating dance yet. For a hundred million years, there was tremendous pressure to breed and no accurate way to simulate the image of a ready and willing partner. If you saw a sexy specimen in a provocative position, they were definitely real and almost certainly making an invitation. Once your eyes have seen it, your brain predicts the next part and tells the rest of your body to get ready with a rush of hormones, initiating a physical response in the pants region. This specific hardware, linking the sight, scent, sound, taste, or touch of a willing partner to your genitals is some of the oldest, simplest hardware in your brain. It doesn't know what a photograph is and that you can't have sex with it.


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

[User] ELI5: Do gas pumps really measure dispensed gas to the thousandths? And if so, how?

[Assistant]
Gas, fuel, diesel etc is typically measured using a special flowmeter called a turbine meter. Basically, the fuel is pumped through the turbine meter on the way to the nozzle. The turbine meter contains funnily enough a turbine which spins as the fluid passes through it. The spinning spindle of the meter has magnets on the shaft which trigger pickups on the outside of the meter which allows the number of rotations of the turbine to be counted. The turbine meter is carefully calibrated so the amount of fuel per revolution is known and thus the amount of fuel passing through the meter can be calculated.

The meters can be extremely small so the volume of fuel per revolution is extremely low allowing for very high accuracy.


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

[User]
[Blade Runner/sci-fi in general] How/why do entire cities like Los Angeles get completely rebuilt in a relatively short time?

The original Blade Runner in 2019 features a massive Los Angeles with all sorts of all-encompassing architecture of impressive size. When we compare it to 2019 of today, the change is nowhere near as drastic as it was in 1982. This is common in a lot of science fiction; in just a few decades, these major cities are completely redesigned and unrecognizable.

What prompts such a massive rebuild? I know the Blade Runner universe was ravaged by nuclear war, but there are still remnants of the old city like the Bradbury Building, implying LA was largely untouched by it. Urban planning isn't cheap; even with advanced technology, how would it be feasible to completely restructure the city's layout, and what purpose does it serve? What is different in the timeline of Blade Runner (and other similar sci-fi) to make this happen?

[Assistant]
Massive amounts of people came into L.A from other cities.

For instance, Vegas is completely deserted after being hit by a dirty bomb, and San Diego is in ruins, with shamrock factories and homeless people who formed militias.

Most of the people moved into L.A since it was untouched by the nuclear war, at least those who couldn't afford a ticket to go Off-World.

The sequel leaves L.A in an even worse shape; while, before 2019, L.A's population was stable, the Blackout and subsequent ban on Replicants worsened the situation. Off-world colonies suffered, and as such, it's a possibility that many returned to Earth.


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

[User] [The Witcher] So this guy with white hair and a big ass sword on his back just walked into the bar that my friends and I are drinking at and for some reason all of my friends want to fight him. I'm pretty sure he kills monsters for fun. How do I convince them to not fight the professional killer?

[Assistant]
He's probably down for arm wrestling or boxing, so try and convince your friends to do that instead.

They still lose, and lose money, but they usually survive with nothing worse than a bruised ego, perhaps a broken nose at worst.


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

[User]
[Harry Potter] What is the typical lifespan of a wizard?

Assuming you don't have a Philosopher's Stone, how long can you expect to live as a wizard?  Some people, like Mr. Ollivander or the Trolly Witch on the Hogwarts Express, seem to have been around for a very long time. Dumbledore was old when he died, but if he hadn't been cursed/killed it doesn't seem likely he would have died any time soon. Does magic give you longevity assuming you don't accidentally blow yourself up or get murdered?

[Assistant] At the time of the books, the life expectancy of a wizard was 138-ish years, meaning Dumbledore actually died kinda young. The oldest known wizard died during the events of the first book at the ripe old age of 755.


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

[User]
ELI5 - how is music remastered

How can an audio engineer take a thirty-forty year old song that was recorded on analog tape?  How is the data extracted and processed?

[Assistant] "Mastering" is the process of taking a mixed song and preparing it for radio play/album printing. For a remaster, they will typically get ahold of the original mixed tapes and do the mastering process over again. A lot of old music was recorded analog with great equipment, so the stems (individual pieces of the finished whole, think single tracks) are usually in pretty good shape fidelity wise. Digital mastering technology and mastering techniques have come a very long way, so what you *typically* end up with is a much higher fidelity (and usually louder, but that's a whole separate story) new master. Ultimately though, the quality of the remaster depends entirely on the ears and equipment of the person doing it.


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

[User]
ELI5: How did prohibition ever gain enough popular support to become law?

Given the massive popularity of alcohol, including among lawmakers, how did the temperance movement ever manage to get it banned?

[Assistant]
1) Because of the Second Great Awakening (1790-1840) and the Third Great Awakening (1850-1900), the American people became increasingly religious (yes, that's possible), and the religious fervor translated into a zeal to improve the society, and one of the greatest scourge these religionists see is drunkenness (and people back then drank A LOT considering how cheap hard liquor was back then). These people just eradicated slavery, and they were moving down the list of societal ills.

2) Because of the Woman's Suffrage movement, as married women and children were one of the people most heavily affected by drunkenness (i.e. husbands drinking away all the money, spousal/child abuse under the influence, etc). Prohibition has great popular support amongst the women of America. And as women's political rights increased, so did the power of the prohibitionists. In fact, one of the Suffragette's main arguments was that it allowed women to escape drunken husbands.

3) The alcohol trade was heavily involved in governmental corruption scandals (in part because they tried to fight the prohibitionists), and so reform-minded progressives (who were in favor of increasing governmental regulation and oversight) increasingly allied with the prohibitionists against a common enemy.


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

[User]
CMV: I'm fine with casual sex, but the idea of my SO having done it infuriates me to no end. This has already put a lot of strains on some of my relationships. Please help me change my view with your perspective.

I was raised in a heavily Confucian society, where the female moral is put under the tiniest bit of scrutiny. Thanks to growing up in an internet world, I've trained myself to adapt to the fact other people have sex a lot, but if it's my girlfriend I'll feel jealous and petty.

It doesn't help that, as I see myself, I am a very possessive person. I'm not making this post to prove anything, I just need help in identifying why I'm having this feeling and any methods, any lines of thinking that would help me in my future relationships.

Thank you so much and looking forward to your answers.

Please help me change my view, this is a part of my personality that I desperately need to change to become a better person.

[Assistant]
Lets pretend that - some time in the future - you and your girlfriend break up.

After some time, you meet a new woman. You are madly in love with her, and you feel like she is your entire world.

You had no idea about this new woman's existence at the time of your previous relationship. You were (for the sake of this hypothetical) under the impression that you were going to be with your previous girlfriend forever.

Would it be fair for your current (hypothetical) girlfriend to be mad at you for sleeping with someone else before her?


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

[User] What would happen if you stepped onto the Martian surface without a spacesuit? How quickly would you die, and what symptoms would you experience?

[Assistant]
The current atmospheric pressure is about 1% of that of Earth, so for all intents and purposes this can be treated as a vacuum for the effects on the human body.

Air will briefly rush out of your orifices, mostly your throat. If you'd been holding your breath this will damage your throat. You'd feel bloated, and your ears might start bleeding.

The small amount of atmosphere might make you feel very cold, depending on your clothing.

Within about 10 seconds you'd lose consciousness because your brains shuts down most higher thought processes due to lack of oxygen.

Within a few minutes irreversible brain damage would occur, and not much later you'd be dead.

TL;DR: You should not walk on Mars without a suit, it's lethal.


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

[User]
[Avatar]Flying Islands, every creature on the planet having an in-head USB port, a global supercomputer, there is no way that is all natural. It must be some sort of giants engineering project. Are there hints in the movie as to who did this, why, what they are like or what their motives might be?

Assuming that all of the strangeness on the planet was intelligently designed by someone or something, what can we determine if anything about them based on what we've seen them create?

And what is their purpose? It all seems really weird. At the cluster of all of it, are these giant trees producing a super valuable mineral. Could the entire planet have simply been designed to manufacture the stuff for later consumption, or is that simply a by-product or components of the whole project?

[Assistant]
Their deity is made up of a living network and is clearly capable of conscious decisions. Its entirely possible that the entire planet including the stuff underneath the surface is a single living organism that designed the ecosystem on its surface for motivations that we wouldnt understand given that it is a fundamentally different existence with a mind that works fundamentally different.

After all there is creatures in our world that it doesnt seem possible they could have evolved such as, IIRC, the kiwi bird that plays an egg so large it crushes the mothers internal organs while forming because the egg is nearly the size of the bird. There is also evidence to suggest that plants are capable of basic communication via chemicals. For example certain plants can release chemicals that attract predators when insects are munching on them.  Given enough time its possible they would be able to communicate in a way similar to that on Pandora.


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

[User]
How are object oriented programming languages implemented?

Object oriented programming languages like C++ and Java have various facilities for code reuse. Things like classes, inheritance, polymorphism, and function overloading. How does a compiler implement these features if it is written in a programming language that does not support object oriented programming (like plain old C)?

[Assistant]
The features of the language have absolutely *nothing* to do with the features of the language the compiler is implemented in.

Python is implemented in C, which has almost none of the features of python.

A compiler (or interpreter) primarily parses text files and produces some data structures that the features of the language can be implemented on top of.

So there question is: what do you need to implement X? And then you implement it.


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

[User] When I eat seafood or other things cooked whole (lobsters, octopus, crabs), why can't I identify any organs?

[Assistant]
The liver, pancreas and most of the rest of the digestive system become a green goopy delicacy called tomalley when cooked. Most of the other organs you'd expect are there but are small and hard to find.

The lobster brain - technically a supraesophogeal ganglion - is one of the trickiest organs to locate. It is about the size of a grain of rice and far forward near the eyes above the esophagus.

There is a heart but it is small, and there are few arteries or veins. Instead of truly having blood they have a fluid called hemolymph that is not confined to arteries and veins, and they rely on body motion to do most of their pumping. This system is called a (partially) open circulatory system. The thing that looks like a vein in the tails of lobsters and shrimp is an intestine.

Orange granular goop in the tail is eggs (roe) and considered a delicacy, and yellowish-white less-granular goop in the tail is sperm (milt).

Carefully removing the brain and waving it around for other people to see at a fancy restaurant will get you mixed reactions.


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

[User] ELI5: How can aftermarket Android developers make custom ROMs and kernels that noticeably outperform a phone's stock software which was developed by teams of engineers who know the software inside and out?

[Assistant]
Android is just Android. It's the same operating system. Custom OS releases like Cyanogenmod/LineageOS use the same proprietary drivers that the manufacturer Android OS releases do. That's where most of the "optimiziation" occurs.

There are few differences at the end of the day. The big outliers are things like bloatware and custom software. If you load a device up with more software then it'll have to swap memory out on a regular basis, which is really really slow. Some manufacturers like Samsung also run their own custom UIs which are again often significantly slower than the stock Android UI.

And lastly keep in mind that this is Google's OS. Google puts in by far the most work. Any deviation from what Google does will generally be slower as Google has some of the best developers in the industry. What custom Android OS releases do is mostly provide a stock Google experience.


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

[User] When will we be able to industrialize graphene and when will the consumer likely see graphene in household products such as computers?

[Assistant]
I currently work in a research lab where several members are studying the properties and manufacturing techniques of graphene. There is a lot of research in the topic right now, and this is mostly because of increased media exposure and "buzz" surrounding the material.

The graphene that we can grow today is small and expensive, that's the bottom line. Making large scale devices of material that is incredibly delicate is hard. You may be thinking "but graphene is super strong!," and it is. But maintaining a certain phase of material at conditions we consider "normal" is not straight forward.

One leading researcher in the field is Dr. Jamie Warner at Oxford. Look up some of his stuff if you're interested in real science on the subject of graphene.

This is probably not the answer you wanted, but there is no good way of addressing this question. Often times research is non-linear. Also, we may or may not get to that point. There are other promising avenues for technology processing that we are exploring.

TL;DR: Not anytime soon.


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

[User] [ASoIaF] Are there any sellsword companies based out of Westeros?

[Assistant] To add to Kmoes' answer, there are individual freeriders and hedgeknights and sellswords like Bronn. But when they form into permanent groups they can improve their long term prospects by joining or creating/taking/being granted a lordship, and their short and medium term prospects by moving to Essos and becoming an established free company. The ones that don't do that turn into groups like the Kingswood Brotherhood, and the Iron Throne does everything it can to hunt them down.


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

[User]
ELI5 How can people still live in Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they can't live in Pripyat or the Bikini Atoll?

And if the answer is that there's less radiation, then why is that?

[Assistant]
The bombs used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki exploded in the air, so **ALOT** less radiation seeped into the environment.

In Chernobyl, the worker city outside Pripyat, the disaster was a leak, followed by an explosion. This put lots of radiation into the surrounding environment.

edit: Also the International Atomic Energy Agency has deemed Bikini Atoll safe to walk, even the fruits are said to be no cause for concern on the island. It's just that it has more radiation that the other islands, which isn't much.


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

[User]
[Doctor Who] Was it really impossible not to get Amy and Rory back?

So in The Angels Take Manhattan, the Doctor states he can never bring the Tardis back to New York or that even one more trip back in time to New York would tear the city apart, which is why he can't go back to get Rory and ultimately Amy too. My question is, was there another way?

For one, we know that River goes back to get the book from Amy, couldn't she have just brought them back? Or what about if the Doctor went back in time but landed in Canada and traveled down to New York, picked up Amy and Rory in a car, and then brought them back to the Tardis in Canada?

[Assistant] Once the angels took them, werent they basically the prisoners of the angels? Ignoring the time-wimey catastrophic stuff, if the doctor did find a way to them, wouldnt the angels just send them somewhere else in time or straight up kill them? Or even take the doctor?


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

[User] ELI5: Where the fuck were these Lonely Mountain dwarves in LOTR when every one of their allies was battling Sauron?

[Assistant]
Remember in the movies when frodo gets caught in that mini landslide and two evil men check out the area? Notice that those guys are heavily armored: they are not the same people that ride the elephants during the siege of minas tirith.

Heavy Armor = Men of Rhun (north of mordor)
Elephant Dudes = Men of Harad (south of mordor)

In the books, an army of 200,000 soldiers from Rhun descends on the reconstructed Dale (which was repopulated between the Hobbit and LOTR). The people of Dale take refuge in Erebor (the dwarf kingdom in the mountain) and besiege the mountain. When Sauron is defeated in the south, the men of Rhun lose morale and the forces of dale and erebor take the opportunity to strike the besieging army and rout them.

Legolas alludes to these events happening very briefly on their way to finding the undead army in the mountains.


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

[User]
What might the source of mathematical knowledge be, if not observation?

One theory of mathematics goes that we learn mathematics by observation, e.g., we learn that 1+1=2 by observing one thing and one thing and putting them together, then observing that we have two things.

I don't really want to argue about whether or not the above theory is true in this thread, but only to point out that it initially seems to go some way toward explaining where mathematical knowledge comes from. Namely, the same place most other knowledge comes from, observation.

Are there any good theories about what other source mathematical knowledge might come from? It's hard to explain exactly what would qualify as a satisfactory non-observational source for mathematical knowledge, but at a minimum it seems like we want an account of mathematical knowledge that gives us some kind of insight into how it is formed and why it qualifies as knowledge rather than opinion.

[Assistant]
Our best scientific theories don't obviously come from observation, but are, to use Einstein's turn of phrase, 'free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.' The observation of the falling apple (if it was indeed an apple) wasn't the source of Newtonian mechanics, otherwise it would have been the source far earlier; it was Newton's keen intellect and inquisitive mind into specific empirical problems. If our empirical theories are not generated by or epistemically grounded on observation, then why should mathematical theories be generated by or be epistemically grounded on observation?

It is a mistake to ask for 'sources' of human knowledge outside the human mind, as if knowledge is gained passively through the eyes and ears and nose.


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

[User]
CMV: Child Support is unwarranted in some cases

Okay first things first, I want to talk about a utopian world and discuss what we want ideally and not complicate this discussion with complicated present world problems like social stigma attached with abortion.

Also, I am completely pro-choice. Women should get veto on whether to keep the child or not.

So the case I want to discuss in particular is when the couple has protected sex and it accidentally results in a pregnancy. The man doesn't want/can't have the child, but the women does wanna take the child to term. The couple gets to know about the pregnancy very early in the process and the abortion is not complicated at all (let's take the easiest form of abortion available to us today - a pill).

Now the couple discusses that the man doesn't want the child and wishes to get an abortion but the woman wants the child and wishes to take it to term. Now as per my opinion on abortion, the woman should have complete right on whether to keep the child or not. But at this stage, if she does decide to keep the child, I think the man should get a choice to be involved in any way at all or not (financially or otherwise).

I say this because of the following:

1) If it was the opposite case, that the man wanted the child and the woman didn't, since I am pro-choice, the man has no place to repeal. It sucks but that's it. Men just have to suck it up. So in the other situation, men should get some choice because they are sucking it up here.

2) For the case under consideration, first remember that the pregnancy is the result of consensual sex so both parents are equally responsible for the child. Now if the woman wants it and the man doesn't, it should still be the woman's choice to bring the child into the world. But provided the pregnancy was discovered at a stage at which it is not complicated to abort, the man should have a say in whether he wants to be involved or not. Now the woman has to decide between aborting (which I am assuming is not a huge deal for this case in particular), and raising a child without a father or financial support. It's a choice and if the woman chooses the latter, they have to suck it up. Like men did in (1).

Now this assumes that a lot around the abortion. Limited research of mine in asking a couple of my female friends, I learnt that these meds are supposed to cause miscarriage and the woman bleeds for a few weeks in the best cases and there are very minor chances of serious side effects like infertility and cancer. I am arguing that the difficulty of the best case is definitely not even comparable to how much financial stress child support is, and the worst case side effects chances are less than the chances of financial ruins for the average man.

While writing this I did come up with a possible argument and my rebuttal for that. If the woman chooses to bring the child into the world, the kid has to grow up without a father and that sucks. But it was the mothers decision to let that happen. Again remember, we are asking the woman to suck it up in this case because she did have a real choice for abortion while in case (1) the father didn't even get a choice and he had to suck it up. So it still is more favourable for the woman.

[Assistant]
This gets posted here very frequently.

The child didn't get a say in whether or not to be born and it is the result of two people's actions. These actions led to the child and so if the child is born it should have support from the two people that caused it.

"Again remember, we are asking the woman to suck it up in this case because she did have a real choice for abortion while in case (1) the father didn't even get a choice and he had to suck it up. So it still is more favourable for the woman."

Some women have the opinion that abortion is morally wrong, therefore, if they get pregnant abortion isn't a viable option.

I think consenting adults understand the risks associated with sex, even through protection. Due to them accepting the risks associated with sex, they should both have a responsibility to provide for the child in the event it is born.


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

[User] [DC/Superheroes in general] Why is Batman's "I don't kill people" approach to vigilantism considered special? Aside from a few select cases, I'm pretty most vigilantes and heroes never straight up murder the bad guy.

[Assistant] Depends on the version, but Batman often has this fear that if he kills once, he'll find it easier to kill the next time, and the next. Many other heroes have a no-kill rule simply because they don't want to kill, and sometimes they break it for good reasons; Batman tends to emphasize this rule more than others because he's got some intense psychological reasoning behind it, and can't afford to bend it. (Unless it's Darkseid.)