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Why do cable companies give such wide and inconvenient timeslots for doing housecalls? | [
"lets say that the tech has 8 trips to make. they don't know how long each appt will take. some could take 10 min. others could take an hour. so they give you a range. but 8-5 is rather unreasonable. i usually see 8-12 or 1-5. you can ask them to call you before they get there. some will, some won't..."
] |
How does the National Security Council differ from other federal agencies? | [
"The NSC is just a group of people, with other government jobs, to whom the President turns for national security advice and recommendations. They read the analysis (facts) written by experts and help the President evaluate public opinion and political factors (not facts)."
] |
What are transcendental equations | [
"Transcendental equations usually lack analytical solutions. But a simple way to solve them numerically is to plot both sides of the equation and look where the lines intersect.\n\nFor example\n\n* tan (x) = e^x\n\nYou cannot solve this analytically, but plot both functions (see link) and you'll see that solutions still exist since the plots intersect each other at multiple places (for example at x ≈ 1.3). \n\n_URL_0_",
"A transcendental equation is so-named when the equation cannot be manipulated in the form of a polynomial (e.g. ax^(2)+bx=c). Very often these equations involve trigonometric functions or e^(x) structures, and sometimes go back and forth between these two."
] |
federal debt: why some people think it doesn't matter, and some do | [
"First part of answering the question is to understand what federal debt or \"Sovereign Debt\" is.\n_____ \nSovereign Debt in the USA is created (mainly) through the use of *Treasury Bills* or \"T-Bills\". These are sold by the government to business, banks and individuals. \n\nWhen you buy a T-Bill you pay the face value and the government promises to pay you that value plus some amount of interest when the bill matures (maturity rates are 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, and 10 years). The longer your maturity the higher the interest rate.\n_____ \nWith an understanding of what the debt is, we can answer does it matter?\n_____ \n**now whether it matters is a matter of opinion, but the general consensus among economists is that *at the moment* it doesn't**.\n\nThe reason it doesn't really matter consists of three main parts; Who is owed, the ability of the government to pay it back, and the interest rate.\n\n1) Who is Owed? As of September 2013 the breakdown is as follows: \nA) Total Debt: 16.738 Trillion \nB) SOMA and Intragovernmental Holdings: 6.834 Trillion \nC) Foreign and International: 5.653 Trillion \nD) Mutual Funds: 1.083 Trillion \nE) Other (Private owners, savings bonds, depository institutions, etc.: 3.168 Trillion \n[Word Doc from US Treasury's site](_URL_3_)\n\nSo the Government itself holds ~40% of the debt, foreign investors (business, banks, and countries) hold ~ 33%, and everyone else holds ~27%.\n[\nOf the foreign holders the biggest two are China and Japan with ~1.3 and 1.2 Trillion \\(respectively\\)](_URL_1_)\n\n2) Can the government pay it back? \nMost likely, yes. The US government has *never* failed to pay its debts and some argue that the [14th Amendment requires the US to pay its debts](_URL_2_).\n\n3) The interest rates. \nInterest rates on T-Bills is *incredibly* low. Under 1% on the 1 year T-Bills. That means that if you buy a $100 T-Bill today, it will be worth $101 in a year. Compare this to the rate of inflation which[ since 2010 has fluctuated between 1.5% and 3.2%](_URL_0_). \nThis means that 1 year T-Bills are *effectively* free money for the government.\n_____ \nSince the plurality of debt is held by the US Government and citizens, the US has never failed to pay its debts, and the interest rates are so low, the Debt is, for now and the foreseeable future, **not a problem**.",
"Debt fear is drummed up as a tool to coerce voters into accepting cuts in entitlement programs. \n\nThe level of debt that the US is currently at is manageable and will continue to be unless we double its ratio against GDP really quick or something."
] |
Why do we capitalise all words except conjunctions and some prepositions in titles? | [
"Convention, at heart.\n\nIt used to be that writers capitalized all letters. Then, some time passed, and they capitalized only nouns and beginnings of sentences. Then, more time passed, and they started capitalizing only proper nouns. \n\nIt's gotten to the point that we only capitalize more meaningful words in general and in titles. For instance, \"the\" isn't as meaningful as nouns and verbs are.\n\nEDIT: Teotwaki69 correctly says in the below post that the convention is based on parts of speech.",
"It's just the convention, but there are variations and it hasn't always been the same. For example, some websites (I believe that Huffington Post does this) *Capitalize Every Word In A Headline*. \n\nOn the other hand, the standard in British English is to only capitalize *The first word and any proper nouns, like Jones, in the headline.* (Then again, they only capitalize the first letter of initialisms, so they write Nasa, Aids, and Dvd, which makes me nuts.)",
"BTW, in German, all nouns are capitalized, as well as the beginning of the sentence. But \"I\" (ich) is not.\n\nSo i was going to the Farm to get some Eggs.\n\nIn the US we usually capitalize everything having to do with the Deity.\n\nSo the Lord said of Jesus, \"This is My Beloved. Hear ye Him.\"\n\nAFAIK, the is not true internationally, for example in Canada, Australia, or Great Britain.",
"I believe it just helps to give the important words more significance to make certain things quicker and easier to read.\n\nEven if you don't fully read the words \"for\" and \"and\", your brain would still naturally assume that they are there in between the important words whilst quickly reading a sentence."
] |
Why does toothpaste clean headlights so well? | [
"Toothpaste is an abrasive. \n \nIf you imagine starting with a plank of rough wood, and wanted it to be really smooth, you'd start with really rough sandpaper. That would scrape out lots of (relatively) deep grooves in the wood. You'd now have something with a rough finish, and would repeat that with finer and finer grades of sandpaper. Going from 40 up to 250 or higher would leave you with a smooth surface, and the scratches get finer, and each time you're scraping away the smaller scratches. \n \nFor something see through it's harder, and the light gets bent more easily by even small scratches, so you'd have to use really really high grades of sandpaper, and it still might look foggy. \n \nNow instead of sandpaper, imagine you took the abrasive off the paper and just rubbed it straight on with a cloth. This would be polishing compound, and it makes much smaller scratches. If you use very small abrasive particles, the scratches are too small to be that far off a flat surface. Toothpaste is a close approximation to a polishing compound like this. The scratches are so small the surface is almost completely flat. You've removed the bigger scratches and your headlights are clear."
] |
in World War 2, to go home did you have to become disabled and would you get paid straight away? | [
"There were a number of qualifications needed to be sent home from the front during World War II as a discharged serviceman or woman - \n\n1.) Contracting an illness that required long term recovery\n2.) Amputations\n3.) Wounds that interfered with stamina, agility, dexterity\n4.) Loss of sight in at least one eye\n5.) Capture and Interrment in a POW camp\n\nThere were other reasons, but those were the majority of the causes resulting in discharge from the military. \n\nCompensation came in the forms of the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the GI Bill of Rights. Under this Bill, servicemen who served in WWII were eligible to receive the following: \n\n- four years of education or training. At the time, this consisted of $500 towards tuition, books and supplies, plus a monthly subsistence allowance. \n\n- guaranteed home, farm and business loans up to $2,000\n\n- unemployment benefits of $20 weekly for up to 52 weeks provided they served a minimum of 90 days prior to medical discharge. It was also understood that returning soldiers, if they were able, could resume their previous employment, vacated when they either enlisted or were drafted. \n\n[ Taken from: _URL_0_ ]\n\nAs for disability payments? The answer is no. They were not paid straight away. Applications were reviewed and often delayed, temporary or in significantly smaller amounts than anticipated. To this day, there are WWII veterans who are still struggling to obtain disability compensation from their time in WWII. For some of these soldiers, their benefits were cut off, or were delayed, or otherwise ended precipitously. \n\nCase in point: _URL_3_\n\nThe veterans were able to receive some rehabilitative services, and some additional health care services thanks to the 1943 LaFollette-Barden Vocational Rehabilitation Act, and then later, thanks to 1946 Hill-Burton Act, where hospitals, rehab centers and public health facilities, but at the time, the 1935 Social Security Act's disability clauses applied primarily to the blind and disabled children. \n\nIt wasn't until the 1950s that Social Security was expanded to include disability benefits.\n\nAdditional source information: _URL_2_, _URL_1_"
] |
Why are crickets so hard to find? | [
"It’s hard to pinpoint in on sounds that are loud enough to create an echo. Things like a smoke detector that beep, leave you clueless because it echos and the sound bounces all over and also it’s short. The beep only goes on for a few moments and then it stops. Sounds that are constant like for example a hissing sound of a leaking air line are easy to find because it’s constant and you can constantly adjust your perception of where it is. A cricket chirps and then it’s silent, leaving you with no ability to figure out where the noise came from and only for you to guess.",
"Imagine if they were EASY to find. Then I assure you, something would eat them, right? Evolutionary pressure to be heard by potential mates but but NOT found by predators must be huge. You are not evolved to find them."
] |
How does machine learning work? Do computers experience cognitive dissonance where they have to weigh two conflicting ideas? | [
"There's a bunch of variations, but a lot of them look like this:\n\nThe computer is given four things:\n\n1. A bunch of pre-defined inputs that look like what it has to do (whether it's a medical diagnosis, the screen of an Atari game, or a Go board)\n2. A program that processes the inputs\n3. A bunch of knobs it can tweak on that program to change it's behavior.\n4. A program that judges it and gives it a score based on the output.\n\nThe computer will then run millions of simulations, and tweak the knobs to try to get the best score overall for all of the inputs it gets. \n\nThere's a bunch of strategies the computer uses to try to figure out how to tweak the knobs. Sometimes, it does get stuck in a corner where tweaking any one knob makes the score get worse but tweaking multiple will make it get better. There are strategies to help the computer get out of that corner, but none of them are really \"cognitive dissonance\" because the computer still isn't really a brain.",
"Machine learning is pretty much purely just fitting statistical models to data.\n\nHeres a super simple example. Say I gather a bunch of data on house size vs its cost. I plotted it on a [2D graph and fit a line of best fit](_URL_0_). Now with this model if you give me a size of a house, I can try predicting what its cost is simply by looking at where it is on the line.\n\nCongratulations you just did machine learning. Another thing you might do is look at the closest house size you've seen before, and output the cost of that, or look at the closest two or three or four and output the average of those. Netflix actually does something similar when recommending you movies by looking at users similar to you and predicting what you might like based on what they liked. \n\nOf course there are much more complicated models but they all essentially do this in one way or another. Given new data, try and predict something based on observations of previous data. Its prediction is hence pretty much always just based on probability. If it chooses x instead of y its because given data it observed and the model you used, it calculates a probability of it being x higher than the probability that it is y.\n\nIf you think about it, this isn't too different from what humans do."
] |
Why does my dog choose so carefully where he pees? | [
"Dogs actually communicate by peeing certain ways or places. If he pees on a place which had already been peed on, he is kinda respondibg the message by the previous dog. Also they can mark their terrotories or leave a message for other dogs."
] |
why do news channels consider Twitter a reliable, relevant, and serious source for different things? | [
"Newspaper reporter here. Proof: _URL_0_ \n\nJournalists use Twitter as a place for information the same way we talk to people as sources. There are a lot of people on Twitter who do and say newsworthy things. Barack Obama, Pope Francis, tons of politicians, scientists and business people all have Twitter accounts. Sometimes they post things that are relevant to larger audiences.\n\nThe other thing that's great about Twitter is when breaking news happens. During the Boston Marathon bombings manhunt, average citizens posted information about what streets police shut down and provided details about what they heard and saw from places journalists couldn't get to. The people on Twitter gave first-hand accounts that reporters used as leads to tell the rest of the country what was going on.\n\nSocial media in general made a huge impact on the Arab Spring, which started in 2010 when citizens took to the streets in protest against various governments throughout the Middle East. Average people's tweets and videos became the first recordings of history. It was an incredible moment that showed how social media could make such a profound impact on the world at large.\n\nGood reporters take what they see on Twitter with a grain of salt just like we treat all information we receive with a bit of skepticism. Twitter is never used as the full story but it has become a major way people around the world share information. People in the media can't and shouldn't ignore it as a legitimate place to learn more about what is happening outside of our newsrooms.",
"> Twitter was just for teens and young adults\n\nWhen reputable sources starting using it to disseminate information, that is no longer the case.\n\nTwitter is an easy way to reach a massive number of people, be it to share a major headline, or a photo of your dinner plate.",
"Reliable, relevant, and serious news sources don't consider Twitter a reliable source for news. They do consider it a source for news leads but still do their own reporting before publishing or even retwitting that information.",
"It gets the attention of a variety of viewers. They're trying to be relevant with young adults. It's all a game."
] |
Why are mice associated with cheese? | [
"Most mice prefer to feed on grains and nuts rather than cheese, but when they're hungry, they'll eat whatever they can find that is edible. Cheese tends to smell very strongly, especially when not refrigerated, and that makes it easier to find by mice, so when they're hungry, they'll go for whatever's easiest to find, i.e. cheese. Over time, this created the (incorrect) assumption that mice like cheese, and this in turn was used in cartoons and other media so often that some people assume that mice are inordinately fond of cheese.",
"Cheese is often storded for long periods of time which increase the chance of mice finding it. Cheese has been made a long time so it has has time to fester as a symbol",
"Once upon a time, we didn't have refrigerators. We had bread boxes, cookie jars, etc. But cheese? Cheese was just a wheel that was left out. And the only thing a hungry mouse could get into"
] |
How do speakers of tonal languages convey different degrees of emotion? | [
"From experience (speaking Mandarin).\nBefore we start, let me try to explain a small bit about how the language works, since it's quite different from English. What most people call words in Mandarin, those single syllabic things with tones, apart from some very commonly used ones, are almost never used alone. They are almost used as part of a short \"phrase\", which work a lot more similarly to words in English. And because of this, those \"phrases\" are about as well known for a Mandarin speaker, as words are for an English speaker.\n\nSo you have a lot more freedom regarding emphasis and tone than you would imagine. There are only 4 tones in Mandarin (5 if you count no tone), flat, rising, falling then rising, and falling. These only apply to those single syllabic words and are quite distinct from each other, differentiating between them isn't too hard (usually).\n\nA phrase as a whole may have a variety of \"tones\" itself, rising or falling within itself. If this is hard to imagine, picture a piece of music that has an overall rising melody, it may have small parts of it that rise or fall. And this combined with emphasis on words, stresses, etc can convey just as many nuances as English.\n\nAnd as far as someone breaking down in tears, that's pretty hard to understand in any language."
] |
Why is self-plagiarism an issue in academics? | [
"SOURCE: I am a college professor and published academic.\n\nSeveral people have already said \"you're not doing the work\" to which OP is responding, \"I did the work earlier and isn't the point just to be competent anyway?\"\n\nWell, yes and no.\n\nThe fact is, if you asked ten educators the purpose of education, you'd probably get fifteen different answers. Teaching you about specific subjects is one purpose. Teaching you \"how to learn\"--that is, how to approach new material in a self-beneficial way--is another. Yet another is economic: part of going to school is learning to deal with authority, to perform seemingly pointless tasks, and to jump through hoops (so to speak). Giving you a diploma or a degree is one way of telling employers, \"this person can do assignments.\"\n\nSetting aside the cynical explanation, though, and returning to the purely pedagogical one: there is value in repetition. If you learn to play a single song on the piano, you will get very good at that song, but you will never become a concert pianist. If you lift weights only one time, you will never get stronger. If you turn in the same paper two or three or four times, you have only \"done the work\" once, when the real educational value is to be found in \"doing the work\" over and over again.\n\nThat's why it's generally disallowed by teachers and professors: because it's \"cheating\" yourself out of the experience the class is supposed to provide. That said, as a graduate student I have (sparingly) quoted my own previous work in new papers, complete with citation, and have never been criticized for it.",
"In academic writing, the assumption is that uncited ideas are a new contribution to the field, even if it was your idea in the first place. It's just a report for a class, but they want you to get used to the style.\n\n(And if you quoted and cited an entire paper, you didn't do any work for that class.)",
"It has already been pointed out that in professional academic circles it's basically repeating yourself, which is annoying and misleading. If you had 3 good ideas diluted by 40 bad ones, and then 10 years later you just publish the 3 in one paper without pointing out where it comes from, it misrepresents the quality of your work.\n\nBut for you, I would say the 'problem' is that you arnt getting your 'brain exercise' for this. You're report on goldfish is boring and no one gives a shit. Especially your prof. He gains nothing from you writing a big long paper. He actually has to spend Saturday reading the dumb thing. He'd rather be drinking. He makes you do it for *you*. It's like saying that because you did pushups in middles school, you never had to do them again. Doing the work, submitting on a deadline etc. are useful skills that will help *you* succeed and be a valuable member of society.\n\nSo go ahead and dont do the work again, that's your choice. But you arnt gaming your way out of anything, you're screwing yourself out of the chance to practice discipline, critical thinking, and adherence to a schedule. It's entirely your call if you want to do the work. These choices determine what kind of person you'll grow into, and what that person will be capable of. It's not like you hurt anyone else by handing in your old work. But it's not the best way to get what you're paying for in this class.\n\nTL;DR: School is pointless if you dont do the work. You're wasting everyone's time, including your own.",
"Several people are responding about 'you not doing the work'. If this scenario were to occur, I would think it is primarily the fault of the instructor. \n\nThere are seldom good reasons beyond laziness to give assignments that are so general that they would overlap with those assigned in another class. If the assignment is sufficiently specific, this shouldn't be an issue.",
"warning PDF:\n_URL_0_\n\nThe short version:\n\nIn the real world:\nIt's because often someone else besides yourself owns or has otherwise been given rights to your work. \n\n*I should also add that in academics it's not always desirable to duplicate information, it can hamper the peer review process. For instance it's its a lot easier to discover fraud or errors in a single article than it is to point out the same about 50 generally similar articles. Instead we tend to reference earlier works instead of re-incorporating them. It just keeps things simpler. Sort of like a built in version tracking system.\n\nIn school:\nIt really serves no useful purpose, it's often either about preparing you for real life by forming habits, or just simply they want you to do it again.\n\nIn any case it's bullshit through and through, and there are cases where self plagiarism is totally appropriate. But sometimes bullshit is the law...",
"Unless you have improved zero for the last few years, chances are, last year's paper on the exact same topic *sucks*.",
"Late to this one but there's an additional point that's not been made, so far as I can see, that's worth making.\n\nWhen you sign up for college, you agree to honor the student code of conduct. You can call this bullshit or not, your call, but traditionally colleges and universities pride themselves on the character of their alumni. You become a \"Winston man,\" \"a Screaming Eagle,\" or wtf they pride themselves on.\n\nStudent codes of conduct have a lower standard of evidence. I forget the exact legal terms here, but if you need, say, \"clear and convincing evidence\" in a court of law to be convicted of, say, dumping soap in the college fountain, in the university kangaroo court they only need \"preponderance of evidence\" to punish. Just as lawyers are held to a higher standard by their bar, so are students held to a higher standard by their code of conduct.\n\nThe code of conduct is a big deal. Students regard it as a EULA to click through. Most faculty have no idea what it is, or why it's important, until perhaps a favorite student runs into trouble.\n\ntl;dr Pretty much ALL student codes of conduct forbid what we are calling here \"self-plagiarism.\" You do new work for each class. The learning experience etc. is why this matters, but the fact that nearly every student code of conduct forbids this should carry some weight with professors and students. Historically and traditionally, you don't go to college to learn short-cuts and shirk responsibility. \n\nThe idea of doing the least amount of work for the best possible grade is super childish and self-defeating. If you don't ever get that, it's your loss.",
"Really? I've found that using the same paper, but updating it for the increasing requirements of the course is a perfectly valid course of action. I wrote a paper in high school on ant behavior, then used what I learned from writing that paper to write a better one for English 102, and an even better one for intro biology. I guess it isn't really plagiarism, as each paper was unique, due to varying requirements for each course. Still, they were on the same subject, referred to the same sources, quoted the same passages. \n\nThen again, I studied engineering, soil didn't have so many classes that required writing a paper every week. The temptation to just turn in the same papers for different classes would get overwhelming when you have three papers on similar topics all due for three different classes the same week...",
"I'm faculty with an MD,Phd\n\nThere are two basic issues with self-plagiarism. The first is that any work an academic produces for primary literature is supposed to be original unless otherwise stated . Wherever it is not, the original source, if available, should be cited. Second, if you are rehashing previously published material through plagiarism, you are failing to cite the previous literature which misleads the reader into believing it is a new thought. \n\nThis being said, there is some leniency given in grant applications (since they are never published and methods portions of primary literature.\n\nFinally, when you poll academics on the issue, you will get a variety of responses as to the seriousness of self plagiarism. For some, any plagiarism is a serious offense. Most, though just say to avoid it in your published materials to the best of your ability.",
"I'm also a college professor. There is an issue in terms of accreditation, which is what allows a college to accept federal money. The agencies that grant accreditation establish the number of contact hours per credit hour awarded. This, to a certain extent, includes the amount of time spent on work outside of class. No one checks the amount of time, but faculty are responsible for showing diligence. Therefore, if a student is allowed to turn in work already submitted for another course the number of contact hours will not add up as intended. Think of it as a condition that helps a contract remain valid.",
"You are student and most likely are not credible. Your work has never been published and therefore worthless. Using material from that kind of source is foolish. However, I could be wrong and you just might be a literary genius.",
"It doesn't matter whether you are plagiarizing stuff you wrote a year ago or stuff someone else wrote - it still means you aren't doing the work.",
"\"one who does the work is not the one who is relieved he is completed, but enlightened\" - Abraham Chekhovian",
"Students can purposely choose to take similar electives and skate through the courses without learning or doing work."
] |
How does investment work? Why should I buy shares in a company? | [
"Say you have a lot of money. Let's say $2 million. That's about as much as an average productive American worker might make in their lifetime. What do you do with that money? You could spend it, but that's kind of a waste. That money could support you for the rest of your life, without you having to work. So let's store it somewhere.\n\nGreat. Where do we store it?\n\nYou could just keep it in cash and store it under your mattress or in your backyard or something. But that's not the best idea. What if something happens? What if your house burns down? What if you dig up the money from the backyard and find that it all rotted or decayed or was eaten by worms? (This has actually happened to people, don't bury paper money) What's more, there's the problem of inflation. $2 million now probably won't buy as much stuff in forty years. Money gets less valuable over time. You want somewhere where your money will be safe, and where it will make more money, growing how much money you have faster than inflation makes it worthless.\n\nA bank is an obvious answer. Banks make sense when you have only a little money, because the government will insure up to $250,000 if the bank fails, which they probably will at some point in your life. My bank failed in 2008. But if you have more than $250,000, then you might not be able to get the rest of your money. What's more, banks only give a little bit of interest on your savings. Like, one or two percent. We can probably do better than that.\n\nSo you invest it. Investing can be many things, but basically it's just taking money you have and buying something that will make you money in one way or another.\n\nFor a simple example, you could invest in something whose price will rise, like some sort of commodity. If you decided buy $2 million worth of gold, that would be an example of a commodity investment. You'd be betting that the price of gold would go up, and you could sell that gold later for more than the $2 million you bought it for. \n\nYou could also buy something you could extract some sort of continuous value out of. For instance, you could buy a house, and then rent it to people. Or buy something like a restaurant, retail store, factory, or mine and take the profit.\n\nBuying shares in a company is a very common way to invest. Basically, a company divides ownership of itself into small pieces and sells those to investors. This means the company can get cash, and helps split up the risk. If someone owns 100% of a company, and the company folds, that guy is in a world of hurt. Stocks let many people only buy a little bit of the company, so if the company folds, they only lose a little bit of their money.\n\nThere are two main monetary benefits, and one indirect benefit to holding stock in a company. One, you can sell your shares later at a higher price like you would a commodity, making money that way. Also, when a company is doing well and makes a big profit, they'll often give out a \"dividend\" to their shareholders, giving everybody a little share of the profit for each share of stock they hold.\n\nThere's also the fact that at the end of the day you're buying part of a company. If you buy a lot of that company, you can influence it. Once you buy a certain amount, you can attend shareholder meetings, get information about how the company is performing, and vote on major courses of action. If you buy 51%, you essentially control it, because nobody can have a bigger share of it than you. There's no immediate monetary benefit, but it lets you control the corporation, which you can possibly influence to get more money, or at least to increase the share price, increasing how much money you'll get when you sell your shares.",
"An investment is anything you buy now with the possibility of getting more out of it than the price you paid for it. In most cases, it simply means selling it at a higher price than you purchased it for.\n\nStocks in a company are potentially lucrative. If the company does better than expected, the share price rises. So if you can buy low and sell high, you'll earn a profit. Some companies pay dividends, sharing some of their profit with their shareholders, thus earning them money without them having to actually sell their shares. However, the risk is that if the company does poorly, share price may drop. So if you may not always get the money you invested back. \n\nThere are other kinds of investments too. You can buy government bonds which guarantee interest back when they mature. They are typically regarded as safer as long as the government selling the bonds has shown its consistent ability to pay them as they mature. But with lower risk often comes with a lower profit, and you can potentially make (or lose) more with stocks.",
"I'll explain the basics. \n\nA company might need extra money for some projects. Let's say a small cellphone company wants to support more than just one state, so they open their company up to investments and split up into 1million shares. Each share is worth 1/1,000,000 of the company and they sell these to get enough money to build infrastructure in every state. This increases the value of the company and the value of every share purchased. So you don't mind selling half your company to quadruple the value of your company, and you don't mind buying a share that is about to quadruple in value, you can sell it back and make 4 times the money. It's a win/win for everyone involved.",
"You put money into a company, you are buying a percentage of that company in simplest terms of explanation. You bought the company hopefully when it is starting out and not worth much, lets say $100, so you spend $1 for 1% of it. The company does well, and is now grown to be worth $200, you own 1% of that, so you have now doubled your money, and if you wanted to sell your share could be sold for $2.\n\nYou're basically gambling that the company is going to do well and grow. There's lots of strategies to minimize risk and what not, but that's a little more advanced.",
"When you are buying a share of a company, you are buying a small piece. You are hoping the value of the company rises making your piece bigger.\n\n\nEdit: maybe this is better for ELI5\n\nYou see a farmer and he offers to sell you a piece of a baby cow for $10 since it's so small. He then uses that $10 to buy food for the cow and so the cow grows. Now the piece of the cow is 5 times bigger when you come back to take your piece home and cook it for dinner."
] |
How do football pools work | [
"In the simplest form, you have a 10x10 grid of squares. Along one axis, you have a team name & each column gets the numbers 0-9. Along the other you have the other team's name & the rows are labeled 0-9.\n\nWhen you buy into a pool, you buy a square ($1 per square is common for friendly pools) and put your name in it. If your square wins, you get all the money.\n\nEach square represents a possible final score for the game, only looking at the final number. If a game is 24 to 14, the square at (4,4) would be the \"winner\"; if the game is 21 to 17, the winner would be (1,7)."
] |
Lobbying vs Bribery | [
"Lobbying is convincing an elected official to vote or act in a way that is beneficial to your interests.\n\nBribery is giving money for personal use to an elected official to vote or act in a way that is beneficial to your interests.",
"Lobbying is a blanket term for any and all efforts to get a politician to change/establish/end a policy that involves direct contact with the politician or their staff. This can be anything from an informational meetings to delivering campaign funds. \n\nBribery is a crime. It happens when a person offers (or a politician solicits or accepts) money or other things of value in exchange for some specific action. It is usually called \"quid pro quo\" bribery, since the idea is that there is a direct trade of money for some particular thing. \n\nSometimes, the lines between the two can seem blurred, especially when a powerful interest seems like the sole supporter of a politician. But, the legal line is in the trade of cash for some specific action."
] |
The Second Postulate of Special Relativity. | [
"The second postulate of special relativity is 'the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant, regardless of the frame from which it is measured'. That's really all there is to it...if you have a physical situation and you measure the speed of light in a vacuum, you'll get c.\n\n > Also, its application in the question \"If your space ship us moving at the speed of light (obviously theoretically, ignoring that humans are physically incapable of traveling at might speed) and you turn your headlights on, what happens?\"\n\nIt's not that humans are physically incapable of travelling at light speed, but that anything with mass is incapable of doing so. And this isn't a 'can't stand the stress' problem or anything like that, it's that the laws of the universe are such that there *is no way* to accelerate a massive object to light speed. This is a fundamental limitation which is of the utmost importance, not something that you can ignore by saying things like 'but hypotetically what if'. Essentially, a consequence of measuring light the same in all frames turns out to be that there simply isn't a speed of light rest frame.\n\nTo put that another way, asking 'what if we travelled at light speed' is the same question as 'if physics is wrong, what is right?'. There is clearly no scientific answer to this question.\n\nWe *can* ask what would happen if you accelerated to 99.99999% of the speed of light and turned out your headlights. The answer is that you would see the light travel away at the speed of light, just as the second postulate states. However, an observer 'stationary' with respect to your pre-acceleration frame would see you moving at 99.99999% of c, with the light slowly moving away from you.",
"The second postulate says \"light moves the same speed regardless of how fast you're already moving\".\n\nAn important point (that I feel is often left unsaid) is that this is NOT true of other waves.\n\nTake water waves. In fact, imagine a pool. But instead of a pool in the ground, imagine a pool on top of a moving bus.\n\nWhen you drop a penny in the water, the waves ripple. Everyone knows water waves move at a constant speed. But the part people don't always emphasize is that, actually, water waves move at a constant speed *relative to the water itself*. \n\nSo say our pool bus is stopped. We drop a penny in it. (We are on the side walk). The water waves move at some speed v.\n\nNow, let's say our bus starts moving at 30mph. We throw a penny in and make another ripple. The water waves are now moving at the speed v + 30mph. The speed has changed because the water is moving with respect to us. \n\nNow, change it to light. Your buddy is in the pool with a flashlight. \n\nThe bus is stopped. He turned on the flashlight. You see it move with speed c.\n\nNow, the bus starts moving. He turns the flashlight on again. You see it moving with a speed of c. *NOT* with speed c + 30mph!\n\nWater and light behave differently in this regard.\n\nThat is the second postulate.\n\nOf course, you end up with weirdness when you think deeply about the consequences of this postulate. You and your friend see the same light moving at the same speed -- but logic says that since he is moving and you're not, he *ought* to see it moving at a different speed than you see it moving. To reconcile this, we have to admit that time can be traded in for space.",
"Note that at theoretical \"light speed,\" mass becomes infinite.\n\nFor the sake of simplicity I will answer your question in a slightly different way. A tachyon is a theoretical particle that moves faster than light.\n\nImagine looking at a tachyon. You wouldn't be able to see it until after it passed you, because the light that it would reflect would be slower than it.\n\nWhen it's already passed you, then you'd see it. Twice. You would see it moving forward (on a slight delay-- it would look closer than it really is), and you would *simultaneously* see it moving away from you in reverse as it approached you.\n\nThe [wikipedia page](_URL_0_) for a tachyon has an interesting animation."
] |
How are things sticky? | [
"Adhesives and other sticky substances contain protein molecules that bond with the molecules of the surface they are spread upon by entering the pores and spaces of the material. Therefore, smooth surfaces such as glass are hard to attach to because there aren't any pores for molecules to enter.",
"Well, things stick in different ways depending on what you use.\n\nGlue, for instance, is a chemical change, so if you glue something and it doesn't stick (like two pieces of glass), it's because the small particles that make up the glass can't be affected by the glue reaction as it sets.\n\nTape, on the other hand, is dependent on many small attractions between the sticky paste on the backing. When you press it onto a surface, it gets mashed up into microscopic pockets, which keeps the tape stuck.\n\nOther reasons it might not stick could be that the surface you're trying to stick to is covered in something like water or dirt, which can keep the glue or tape from touching the surface of whatever you're trying to stick to."
] |
Twitter Valuation | [
"It's an estimated value of the worth of the company. For instance, if BigAdvertisingFirm buys up Twitter, they instantly have access to all those millions of users."
] |
How does honey never expire? | [
"Its acidity, the lack of water, and the presence of hydrogen peroxide are the factors that cause honey to be so incredibly shelf-stable for pretty much eternity. \n\nHere's some reading on it:\n\n_URL_0_",
"Perfect! I just watched this video a couple weeks ago and now I get to pass on information!\n\n[HONEY VIDEO!!](_URL_1_)\n\nNinja edit: These videos are ELI5 friendly too ;D"
] |
What physically determines the way your voice sounds? | [
"The allele pairs in your genes which influence the way your body is formed including vocal cords and throat shape size etc.\n\nUnfortunately I do not have scientific proof to back anything up someone else will have a more professional answer but here is what I found.\n\n_URL_0_"
] |
What happens to people who are insomniacs, and why do they struggle so much to fall asleep? | [
"For one thing, there might be an underlying medical condition going on -- imagine trying to sleep well with chronic pain that's always happening. Or if you have an anxiety problem. Those things don't go away when you're trying to sleep.\n\nPeople might also have poor sleep hygiene. This means keeping some good, consistent practices with your sleep the same way you would do with things like showering or brushing your teeth. Try to go to bed at the same time every day, and limit any activities in bed other than sleeping or having sex. If you spend a lot of time in bed watching TV or whatever, your brain learns to associate the space with things other than sleep. If your brain associates the space with only sleep, you'll be more likely to fall asleep well -- the same way you might start to feel hungry after walking past a restaurant, even if you weren't hungry before. Stuff like exercising and avoiding caffeine later in the day helps too."
] |
If cigarettes contain things like arsenic, butane, cadmium, ammonia, and formaldehyde, how can people smoke then everyday for years without dying within the first few weeks? | [
"There is no such thing as lethal or safe substances. There are only lethal and safe doses. Water can be toxic if you drink enough of it.",
"\"The dose makes the poison\" - Paracelsus\n\nThis is condensed from - \"All things are poison and nothing is without poison; only the dose makes a thing not a poison.\"",
"Because they are not at immediately toxic levels. Over time, however, they cause a great deal of damage to a person's health.",
"If you subjected a sandwich to a detailed chemical examination, you would find traces of most of those things as well.\n\nCigarette smoking is bad for you, no doubt, but producing a laundry list of scary chemicals is not the way to prove that. It is just a dishonest scare tactic.",
"There are three kinds of poisons in cigarette smoke, those that cause damage and those that cause cancer, and those that cause heart disease. The body has defence mechanisms against poisons and damage, but constant exposure overwhelms them, resulting in chronic damage like COPD (cough and poor lung function). The heart is damaged by small particles that are so small they pass to the bloodstream. This causes blocking of the arteries in the heart. Finally, carcinogens are attacked by the DNA of lung or other cells. Damage to DNA can destroy self-destruct mechanisms that prevent DNA-damaged cells from surviving and dividing. But the genes are in specific positions and the carcinogens are attacked by random parts of DNA, so it's random like Russian roulette. This is why there's no safe dose. Of course people who smoke less get fewer cancers, but this works only on population level. For an individual, if you smoke lightly and get cancer it's still your fault because of the smoking."
] |
How exactly radiation affect human body? | [
"Energetic neutrons, and gamma rays and x-rays (both forms of light), go blasting off and strike molecules in your cells. This has the effect of physically breaking them apart, a la the neutron, or breaking covalent bonds as the rays do. Enough of this can just kill your cell outright. But if you just get the occasional strike against a DNA molecule, now you have a physically broken piece of DNA. If it doesn't kill the cell, DNA has an interesting property in that it can reassemble itself. The problem is it doesn't always go back the right way. Often, this creates a cancerous cell and your body will identify and destroy it. Sometimes, your immune system can't \"see\" the cell as cancerous and it's accidentally allowed to run rampant. More radiation is used in chemotherapy to kill the cells in the same way they were made cancerous in the first place."
] |
Why is flossing considered more important than brushing? | [
"I'm not a dentist, but from what I've been told by my dentist, flossing reduces bleeding gums more than brushing. Bleeding gums are actually quite a problem, aside from being gross, because they add stress to the heart. So bleeding gums can actually contribute negatively, and sometimes severely, to the health of your circulatory system. Since you can live without teeth, but not a heart, I think that's the big point. \n\nLess dramatic is that flossing does prevent cavities in places where cavities are more prone, like between teeth and in the very back. These places are cleaned less efficiently by a brush.\n\nAlso I've heard flossing does positive things for the health of your gums which brushing can't do.\n\nI also have heard that what the other commenters have said about how everybody brushes but many people don't floss, so the dental industry makes flossing a bullet point, is true as well."
] |
- Why taking long showers or brushing your teeth with the faucet open waste water? | [
"The source of your clean water and the location where your wastewater ends up are rarely the same. Water treatment plants can recapture SOME wastewater, but the rest is lost, dumped into the sea (where we don't get drinking water from) or downstream for the very reason that we don't want sewage in our water supply. It depends greatly on where you live, but commonly fresh water comes from snow melt and rainfall replenishing natural or man-made aquifers, and not being drawn from a river.",
"It doesn't waste water as in the water is gone. But it wastes precious potable water. Lots of people on this Earth don't have access to safe for consumption water. Letting ours just go down the drain for nothing is exactly like throwing away good food.",
"The water might come from a fresh water source like a river or lake, but end up in the ocean and become salt water"
] |
How are KFC's 11 secret herbs and spices still a secret? | [
"It's not worth it. At this point, KFC could probably publish the exact recipe on the walls of their restaurants and it wouldn't make a difference. No one is going to create a chain restaurant to make the exact same thing that another chain restaurant does with no changes at all. If someone wanted to make money selling KFC fried chicken, it would be far easier and more cost efficient to just franchise a KFC."
] |
How come educational channels like history and discovery do not show educational things anymore? | [
"Educational shows no longer draw enough viewers to pay the bills for the upkeep of the channel.",
"Because so many people learn about history from Reddit instead."
] |
How CDs/DVDs Store and Read Data, and Why a Scratch Can Ruin Everything | [
"CDs and DVDs are types of *optical discs*. The CD/DVD is covered with a large number of little holes, called pits. A tightly focused laser shines onto the surface of the CD, and depending on whether it hits a pit or a flat part, the intensity changes. A sensor reads that intensity change, and translates it into a 1 or a 0. That stream of 1's and 0's is then turned into music or video."
] |
what did ancient humans do with umbilical cords during birth? | [
"The umbilical cord is connected to the placenta, the interface between the fetal and maternal bloodstreams, which is given the folksy name 'afterbirth' -- because the woman ejects it shortly after the birth, within the hour. Thing weighs about a pound too. Isn't giving birth beautiful?\n\nOnce that's out, the baby is entirely detached. The umbilical cord will fall off the baby's end in a few days, leaving behind the navel, or 'belly button', assuming you don't cut it.\n\nEdit:\n\nDid I mention [you can eat it?](_URL_0_)\n\nNot Safe For...well...anything.\n\nThe real question is, is it vegan?"
] |
Why do we use fresh water for our sewage? | [
"It's easier and cheaper to have a single delivery system to all buildings than it is to develop and install a second identical system for non-potable water delivery.\n\nYou're also avoiding the inevitable mishaps when people confuse the two.",
"Because when indoor plumbing was first developed, we thought there was plenty of fresh water, and that was never questioned\n\nSome people are changing that by incorporating grey water in their toilet systems."
] |
I broke up with my GF yesterday, it was my own decision because the relationship was at a point we both were unsatisfied. Why do I want her back, even though my brain says it's better this way? (It lasted over 4 years) | [
"Sorry to hear that. Going through a break up is hard.\nFirstly, and its been mentioned is that love is a form of drug. I believe, going from memory its oxytocin but i may be wrong. Simply put, your body does get a 'high' from your partner and breaking up leads to 'withdrawal', unfortunately. There a lot of variables as well, ive read before that that when you form a relationship with somone, your personalities can start to blend to the extent where they become your other half so to speak. I personally found that i picked up a few traits, from my 5 year relationship, so that adds fuel to the fire. \nI definitely feel for you and you partner. Not a good place to be. If you (or anyone else) need help, we're all here for ya. Take it easy champ.",
"So there is the mental component: you miss the familiar companionship you had. You look at it from a perspective of losing someone who probably knows you best in a day to day fashion.\n\nThere is also another component, in that you are LITERALLY addicted to her. Her scent/pheromones have become an integral part of your daily expectation, that your brain is basicly in withdrawal at the moment. It'll pass.",
"You want the \"physical addiction to someone\" talk or is there more to this? Also don't listen to the idiot saying you might be making a bad choice. You havent told us enough for real advice and they have no clue who you are outside of here... Or it's your ex, in which case that person is horribly immature and needs to rethink who they are and what they have become to attempt manipulation like that.\n\nIf you think it is best, then for you it is right, and no one will ever be more right about what you want than you.",
"Because emotions and common sense aren't always related.",
"Simple shit, dude. You will always want to go back to what was comfortable. It may have been good or bad, but either way it was comfortable. Don't get comfortable. That's when living your life turns into not actually living your life.",
"Similar situation, OP. Ended things with my GF recently (although not anywhere close to 4 years). It was the right move. We were a bad long term match and although I'm crazy about her as a person I knew I didn't want her as a wife. \n\n\nSo we wallow for a bit. Part of it is the 'addiction' referenced here - you spend so much time acclimating your life around a person that eventually, when they are gone, you don't remember how to be 'you' without them. \n\n\nThe other part is loneliness. For 4 years you had someone who cared and listened when you needed it or cuddled to watch TV with you at the end of a long day. Now you're on your own and this isn't BAD. I don't know about you but for me, this breakup is all about getting back in touch with 'me'. \n\n\nIn exchange for that, I'll deal with a few months of depression and loneliness. I'm smart enough to realize these things pass with time. By the time I'm ready to meet the next girl I'll be a better person for it. Short term heartache can lead to long term gain.",
"The memories. Your brain will bring up the great memories but not the bad causing you to think that you left something great. Just gotta remember the reason why you ended things and keep looking forward not back. Good luck"
] |
Why do many email services charge per email address/account, while most Instant Messengers let you have unlimited users? | [
"You want to charge a company as much as that company is willing to pay for a certain service, and this is usually directly proportional to how big that company is, and a great way to measure corporate size is how employee count, and a company usually has one email account per employee plus a few extra emails for departments, etc. A good rule of thumb is 1.05 * employee count."
] |
What happens after someone escapes prision | [
"The person who escaped tends to spend most of the time trying to get further from the prison while the police try and find them and then put them back in.",
"The escapee is going to be on foot for at least a while, and they're probably in their prison uniform. Usually, the escape is discovered pretty quickly, and it doesn't take long to track down the escapee using some dogs to track their scent, along with other clues like footprints. \n\nIf the escapee gets out of the immediate area, the prison has all of their details including pictures of their face, tattoos, weight, height, etc. This gives local police a far better picture of the person they're looking for than what they'd have after a robbery, and it makes any appearance in public for the escapee really risky. Unless they have someone on the outside ready to pick them up and hide them, they usually stay on foot, sticking to rural areas and parks. \n\nSomeone with connections can have things set up on the outside to get a means of escape as well as the documents, clothes and other items needed to blend back into society. El Chapo's second escape involved a tunnel over a mile long that started at a shower, which had no cameras aimed at it, to a half-constructed house. Setting up this escape took at least a year of work. There was even a motorcycle inside the tunnel so he could get to the other side long before the prison would notice he was missing."
] |
Why can't we build a giant heat proof bulldozer to put out forest fires? | [
"The bulldozer would run into tress and quickly be unable to move.\n\nCertainly they can mow down small trees but large trees are very hard to topple (consider the force of wind they must resist and you get a sense of it)."
] |
Why can't I become the President of the United States (I was born in Canada)? | [
"The founders were nervous that a foreign power would attempt to control the country by getting one of their own elected president. Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers:\n\n > Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one querter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?\n\nAlso, if we let, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger become president, and some Austrian rose to become a belligerent European dictator (unrealistic, I know), there'd be concern that he wouldn't necessarily act in the best interests of the United States.",
"Its the rules\n\n**US Constitution, Article II, Section 1**\n\nNo person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty-five years, and been fourteen years a resident within the United States."
] |
How do tempered glass screen protectors stop phone glass from breaking (cracking)? | [
"It's kinda like how sidewalks and asphalt work. You've got this outside barrier that breaks first, which provides enough resistance to stop a deeper or more severe break from happening.\nMost breaks are spiderweb fractures, a small part of the screen is damaged and it just keeps getting worse. Well, by using a screen protector, you can keep the actual screen from getting these surface cracks that weaken the glass, and so only the very cheap screen protector gets damaged and subsequently breaks."
] |
How does the rule of 3 work? | [
"[You're going to have to be more specific.](_URL_0_)",
"The comedy rule of three is paraphrased as follows:\n\nIn any given list, the first two items are ordinary, and the third is 'wacky.'\n\nTake [Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking.](_URL_1_) Arson and Murder follow a pattern, but Jaywalking breaks that pattern. The first two items serve to create a mindset, and when the third one is different, the result is comedy. More or less. Wait, that wasn't very LI5.\n\nLI5: The rule of three says that, to be funny, say two things that are similar, and then a third that is completely different.\n\ne.g.:\n\n\"What's good to eat here?\"\n\n\"Well, we have great steaks, our french onion soup is divine, and the chef's special is roasted meteorite.\"\n\nExcept funny."
] |
Was there any form of birth control used at brothels in pre-moderrn times? How did women prevent getting pregnant? | [
"There have been known herbs that can be used to induce abortions - such as Pennyroyal, that would be mixed with wine / tea.",
"iirc Roman prostitutes used sponges drenched in vinegar. Put it in before intercourse and it kills off the sperm.",
"There's an [/r/AskHistorians post](_URL_0_) with some excellent in-depth answers to this question.",
"As noted, herbs. \n\nThe classic ol' pullout method has been around a while. \n\nVarious prophylactics have also been around. Condoms (generally made of some variety of gut). Contraceptive sponges. Probably some form of diaphragm. \n\nNot sure if they would've been familiar with the rhythm method, but obviously having period sex is fairly effective, but again obviously, that wouldn't have been THAT popular of an option. \n\nFrankly, though? There wasn't that much they could do about it. There would've been a fair number of kids running around. There were a few options once they got pregnant, but nothing very nice.",
"One theory on the extinction of [Silphium](_URL_1_) is that it was overharvested for its use as a contraceptive.",
"In days of old, \nWhen Knights were bold, \nAnd condoms weren't invented,\nThey wrapped a sock around their cock, \nAnd babies were prevented."
] |
Does the shape of the Pentagon actually help the U.S. military? | [
"The design of it was to maximize office space while minimizing travel time on foot from one side to the other. The theory was for better reaction times and message delivery.",
"The Primary feature of the Pentagon is that no two points in the building are more than 7 minutes apart on foot. When it was built this was a significant upgrade over a similar size office building which would be a fairly large skyscraper. With modern technology(i.e. Email, videoteleconferencing) it really isn't that important.",
"Yes. If it was a different shape, like a hexagon, everyone would think they were stupid for calling it a pentagon. People would think they were stupid and weak, and would take advantage of the US.",
"When the Pentagon was planned there where two possible sites avaiable, initialy a site next to Arlington Cemetery was chosen which was roughly pentagonal, so to maximize the avaiable floor space the building was planed as a (slightly irregular) pentagon, later do to concerns that the building would block the view of Washington from Arlington Cemetery the location was changed to the other possible location but to avoid having to replan everything the building stayed as a (now regular) pentagon."
] |
If I'm thinking in english, what were thoughts like before we developed language? | [
"Here is a quote from Hellen Keller recalling what her thought processes were like before she was introduced to language. Sure, it's not *exactly* what you're looking for, but I think it provides some insight. [*The World I Live In* by Hellen Keller, Page 37](_URL_0_)\n\n > Before my teacher came to me, I did not know that I am. I lived in a world that was a no-world. I cannot hope to describe adequately that unconscious, yet conscious time of nothingness. I did not know that I knew aught, or that I lived or acted or desired. I had neither will nor intellect. I was carried along to objects and acts by a certain blind natural impetus. I had a mind which caused me to feel anger, satisfaction, desire...\n\n > When I wanted anything I liked,--ice-cream, for instance, of which I was very fond,--I had a delicious taste on my tongue (which, by the way, I never have now), and in my hand I felt the turning of the freezer. I made the sign, and my mother knew I wanted ice-cream. I \"thought\" and desired in my fingers.\n\nThought without language, at least from what can be gleaned from Hellen Keller's own observations, is made up of basic desires, habits, and emotions (anger and satisfaction). Complex thoughts aren't really possible without a language to build ideas out of. So thoughts like you're having, even by just asking a question such as the one you posted are really only possible because you have a language that you can think with.",
"when you say 'thinking', that is a big process, of which 'thinking in words' is a small part. kind of like confusing the commentator for the entire ball game.",
"How do infants think before they learn a language? My guess would be that if you don't think in a language, you can probably think with images, experience, and instincts. Those don't require any language.",
"You are not necessarily thinking in English, but the thoughts you have get translated/associated with it because you have become accustomed to \"thinking in English,\" from your constant use of the language. When learning a new language, you usually aren't fluent until you can \"think in XXXXish\" and I was once told that when you start dreaming in the new language, you know you're good.",
"You don't really think in any language at all. You talk to yourself in English but your brain is really just processing some abstract concepts. I notice this a lot because I am bilingual. I notice my thought process is language agnostic so that I can think of whatever I want and then put it into words without translating an \"english\" thought into a \"spanish\" thought and then into words.",
"_URL_1_\n\nThis podcast should answer all your questions. The main man in question describes his times without language as the darkest of his life. Hell, it took him and his friends almost an hour to communicate what we could in the space of 10 seconds. It's truly interesting and thought provoking to hear about this.\n\nAnother topic delved into is that of pairing ideas with words in a language, without which you wouldn't even be able to think of simple relations. Even empathy is almost impossible without a *sufficiently complex vocabulary*. Even those who could communicate in signs discussed in the podcast weren't even capable of thinking empathetically until they were opened to new words.\n\nWords are important for thinking, guys.",
"What you're looking for is the distinction between \"access consciousness\" and \"phenomenal consciousness\". The former denotes our ability to \"access\" information knowingly and then use it (i.e, report, rationalize, or discuss it for example), and it's usually synonymous with \"propositional attitudes\" like beliefs, desires, and thoughts. It's what most people refer to when discussing consciousness so that a person being \"conscious\" of his surroundings means he can access their informational content. \n\nPhenomenal consciousness refers to \"what it is like to be\" something and it is harder to describe. \n\nThe experience of noticing letters on a page is being phenomenally conscious, while reading the letters and understanding them is being access conscious. \n\nI think the thoughts you refer to are propositional attitudes, and so they're access consciousness. Without the ability to develop propositional attitudes, it's possible that one is just phenomenally conscious, although I'm not too sure. \n\nHope this helps!\n \nGood source: _URL_2_",
"As far as I understand it, we think best in the same way we encode information, but are able to think in different ways. For example, in Russian, there are two words for what we would consider to be blue. In tests, the Russians were able to recall which of the two \"blues\" they saw better than the English speakers, suggesting they encoded that information based on their language, as a sort of shorthand.\n\nHowever, English speakers were able to distinguish between the two colours when they were placed in front of them, suggesting that we are able to cope with concepts we are unable to encode in language.\n\nFor this reason, when you're thinking about a visual memory (eg: remembering what the Mona Lisa looks like), you're more likely NOT to rely on language, while when you're trying to remember what someone said, you probably will rely on language, rather than just a vague concept.\n\nSo that's memory, but what about thought?\n\nWell again, I believe there are different types of thought, and each thought is encoded differently in the brain. If I think of my mother, for example, I have thoughts that are emotional, visual, and auditory (I can hear her voice), but nothing particularly language based. If, as someone else has said, I'm trying to do programming, I think using language. I would struggle to visualise the concepts involved.\n\nSo before, we probably thought more slowly, and our memories were worse.",
"I don't know if this will help out much, but I'm one of those few people who can recall very early memories in life, from around a year old, and verified from several family members. For example, I had recently had my circumcision, and could not wear a diaper. Well, being a baby, I pooped on the floor. I remember that I just *knew* the poop wasn't supposed to be there, and that the one face (my mom) always took care of the things I needed. So I crawled down the hallway, pulled myself up on the couch, and proceed to tug on her shirt because it was the only way I had to communicate with her. I had to keep tugging at her shirt because she wasn't responding the way I wanted her to. Finally, my Grandma noticed my determination and stood up, so I went to her and tugged on her pants, then I went over to the area where I had my accident. Grandma came over there, and then I lose the memory.\n\nThe only other thing I can think of in relation to this is when I learned how to start walking. When I recall those memories, I remember the texture of the ridge on the couch cushions, and most predominantly, I remember how my knees felt; how wobbly it was to try and keep myself upright. My Grandma was sitting about 4 feet away from the couch holding a bottle. I went right to her. My mom started crying because I walked to Grandma before her.\n\nThese memories are all in visual and sensual form. There's no language to them at all.",
"ITT: A whole bunch of uninformed guesses.\n\nI am not a linguist(yet), but I have taken a few linguistics courses, including historical linguistics. What I can tell you is that \"before we developed language\" is believed to be so long ago that it is likely to never be ascertained. Possibly language even developed before homo sapiens, in ancestor species. But we likely won't ever find out, because the only way to tell whether \"language\" existed is through writing, and we know that developed looooong after verbal language.\n\nWell, there is also the \"comparative method\" of historical linguistics where you compare different languages and estimate how far back they separated, but that only takes us back a few thousand years past the written record.\n\nHumans have been around ~100,000 years, our records only go back a few thousand, we don't know how far back language developed and we likely never will.",
"Do you guys talk to yourselves in your mind all the time? This never happens to me. I basically only think in words as I speak or type.",
"Maybe you think in feelings and emotions if you have no language.",
"Not everyone has an internal monologue / inner voice, and they cannot be said to think in a particular language. In fact, there are religious sects that devote some of their efforts to training themselves to get rid of their inner monologue in an effort to seek enlightenment or understanding. It is often observed that people with autism spectrum disorders lack an inner monologue and tend to \"think in pictures and shapes\".\n\nI suspect that prior to our acquisition of speech, our thought processes more closely match those of people lacking an internal monologue, though I don't know that anyone has performed an experiment to test that assertion. It would be a difficult experiment to conduct.\n\nInterestingly, there are a few drugs that have the uncommon side effect of shutting down the internal monologue. Those affected lose the involuntary language-based stream of consciousness, but aren't otherwise affected (other than finding it disconcerting).",
"I would read Chomsky and information theory by Shannon. You raise a great question that is multifarious in its answer(s). I don't/won't claim to have read enough to give even a poor answer, but you aren't alone in asking this basic question.\n\nEvery piece of information must be encoded somehow and language is an encoding process that insists upon itself to transmit information.",
"You're thinking in emotions. And also, not really in english at all. Only little parts of all your thoughts get translated to thought-sentences, but behind those scenes there are far more thoughts.\n\nYou know something before you \"think\" it in your language. And most of what you know is never said out loud in your mind at all.\nThoughts are still a mystery.",
"One of our brains most useful tools is the ability to imagine possible situations and run simulations on them. We can, and often do, try to narrate these simulations so that we can communicate them to others, but it is important to note that we first have the thought, then we translate it into language.\n\nWhat would happen if a bear suddenly burst through your front door? Imagine how you would handle that situation. \n\nI bet that you are visualizing this scenario. Sure you could slap some commentary on this mental movie so that you could convey your game plan to me. However you could also just run the simulation in your head and understand the game plan yourself. You wouldn't have to think through the sentence \"I'd shit myself, and curl up in a ball to cry\", because your simulation would have already shown you that.",
"Does anyone actually talk out their thoughts in their head? I find spoken language to he extremely inefficient. My thought process at simply thought - I'm not forming sentences in ky head - I guess I just manifest concepts. \n\nFor example if I think \"oh I forgot to call Bill, I will probably have a chance to call him around 5:30, when I get back from work.\" Instead of literally thinking of every word - that entire sentence is immediately understood as a concept. \n\nLike: call bill! 5:30....but you don't say that in your head - its just immediately understood.\n\nBasically I think people think in the pure concepts language tries to symbolize via meat sounds.",
"kind of mind numbing to think about and u/Orikons did well with his [Hellen Keller quote](_URL_5_) but to delve deeper into the subject there this [radiolab episode](_URL_3_) Personally I feel like it would constantly be like having something on the tip of your tongue but never feeling the satisfaction or resolution of thinking of it.\n\nedit: [this radiolab](_URL_4_) (the other one was about hearing voices in yer head and still interesting)",
"Zen student here- you don't think in English. You only think that you think in English.\n\nYou think in very abstract thoughts that get expressed as words in the mind very quickly. It's really tough to differentiate between the abstract thought first occurring and the transition to verbalized thought without lots of practice in watching thoughts.",
"I remember an event before I could talk when I saw my parents arguing. I was so frustrated because I wanted to tell them to not argue, but I did not know what any of the words meant or how I was going to do it. So I just kept watching...\n\nEdit: Deleted repeated word",
"I heard a theory that language and writing are like mental shorthand. They allow us to think about and process more information more quickly and to think more abstractly. \n\nAlso children who grow up isolated without language are pretty severely limited and some say that language is part of our evolution.\n[Feral_child](_URL_6_)",
"[Here](_URL_7_) is a relevant RadioLab episode from NPR. I love their Saturday programs.\n\nPerhaps skip to 11:00 minutes. At 19:00 or so, the main point starts coming to. I plan to summarize this better when I have more time. Regardless, explore RadioLab.",
"Languageless.\n\nI'm quite *capable* of thinking in English (my native language) but it's not my default. Most of the time, unless I'm specifically thinking about conversation/communication my thoughts are not in English. \n\nSometimes, my thoughts are visual. I have pictures in my head... and I don't have words to go along with them usually. If, for example, I'm sewing a shirt, for example, and I look at it and mentally picture all the different ways I could change that seam, and mentally figure out how that would effect the shape of the garment. It's shapes in my head.\n\nMost of the time, however, my thoughts are neither shapes nor words, and I'm not exactly sure how to describe them besides \"thoughts\". It's very difficult to describe using language, something that doesn't use language. It's more in line with emotions. When you're sad, you don't have to think \"Oh I'm quite sad right now\" in order to know that. You feel it. And that's sort of how my thoughts work. They just *are*. I just *know* them, without giving them words or shapes.\n\nYou know how when you're talking, and you forget the word for something - it's on the tip of your tongue, and you just can't think of it, but you know exactly what word it is you're looking for, exactly what concept it belongs to, if you could just remember that word? That's similar to how my thoughts work by default (except I'm not seeking that missing word). I have all these ideas/thoughts/feelings in my head, but the words aren't there.\n\nAnd, oddly, this is something that's developed and become more pronounced over the years. As a kid, most of my thoughts were primarily visually-based, some few were verbal, and very few were image/wordless. My mother attempted to describe imageless/wordless-thought to me once as a child and the idea baffled me. That didn't make sense. And now I find, by accident somewhere along the way, that I primarily don't think in language or image.",
"Isn't language just a medium of communication?\n\nI find it strange that our thought processes would be limited by our command of language. Does this mean one cannot progress past a certain degree of thinking if their language skills are handicapped? How are new words for new ideas formed then?\n\nI think the idea of language being a limiter is inherently flawed - before certain ideas were invented, they didn't have words for them. But we managed somewhere along the way to invent a word for the idea ANYWAY. This means that even if I grew up without language, somewhere along the line if I were exposed to a new idea (say, a caveman to fire), I would find some way to express the idea of fire in my own medium of communication.\n\nEven if unable to express abstract concepts, I would still be able to express them using an existing object which is finite and doesn't require higher thinking.\n\nI think this is best illustrated mathematically. Lets say I don't understand the concept of 2. But I understand the concept of 1. I can express 2 as 1 + 1. and using that as the basis of maths, everything can be derived from 1 via a mathematical function.\n\nLikewise, if I am someone who doesn't possess language, I can explain the concept of \"growth\" by perhaps comparing a big tree in a forest to a small tree in the forest by pointing and grunting. Maybe that's how we expressed the idea of growth before we developed language. But I think its absurd to say that we are limited by language, because language came AFTER thought, not before.\n\nTLDR Edit: Higher order thinking is built upon basic observations perceived by our 5 senses. As long as we can sense objects, we can subdivide complex concepts into micro interactions between the objects we perceive. Complex thought is still possible, though highly roundabout.",
"I think I might actually think without any language or visualization at times.\n\nWhen a question arises in my mind, i discuss it \"verbally\" with myself in my head. This usually goes on until a conclusion has been reached. \n\nBut sometimes I can conclude it without speaking, it doesn't really feel like I am using any of my senses but the conclusion just \"pops\" in my head. It feels like my subconscious mind resolves it faster than me and delivers the answer to me. \n\nWhen this \"pop\" suddenly happens it will stop my train of thought and I will think \"aha so it's like that\" and I will completely understand it, however it is not \"translated\" into words yet so when I think about it, it is kind of formless, no visual images, no words. I don't associate anything with the conclusion but blackness, it just exists in my head. If this is something that I then need to explain to someone I then have to translate it to language which takes a few seconds actually.\n\nI hadn't really reflected much on this experience before this thread, it doesn't happen that often. Has anyone else experienced this?",
"I'm not sure if this will work, but let's try something out. So me and you are texting each other right now:\n\nYou: You have to come to my party tonight man, it's going to be great.\n\nMe: I'm not sure, I'm feeling kind of under the weather...\n\nYou: Come onnnn, you know that chick you've been talking about? Lauren? She's going to be there.\n\nMe: !\n\nPersonally, if I had a text conversation like that, and I saw the last text, I wouldn't read it as 'exclamation point' like I did the other previous messages. I'd read it as a feeling, if that makes any sense. I think of exclamation points as a way of showing surprise or emphasis. I wouldn't think about any particular moment that I felt surprised, but I would know exactly what that meant as soon as I saw '!'.\n\nI believe before knowing any language, you would think in feelings instead of actual words. Now that you know english, you associate a particular word with a certain feeling. The '!' punctuation is pretty cool because it emphasizes a certain feeling without really having an english word attached to it.",
"My best shot at an answer is to describe a situation where you are thinking but are mostly not using language: when you do primal things, like sleeping, eating, on the toilet, having sex, in a stressful situation or in pain, your brain has thoughts that are not easy to translate into a language.\nYou then have to work to translate the feeling to describe what happened : pleasure, pain, excitement, etc.\nBefore you do that process, the thought does exist, but has not verbal form.\nIn primal situations this is easier to do because the thought is strong and you can recall it as it was before putting a name to it.\nI think meditation has a lot to do with thinking without using language. In my opinion language is a lower quality photocopy of the original thoughts, so by putting them into words you lose information about yourself.\n\nWhen you speak more than one language this is a bit easier to extrapolate.",
"Based on my own experiences I would say that everyone does some thinking without words. Certainly we don't think about math (or at least higher math) with words, that would be terribly inefficient. The best way I can describe it is, in a sense, you first know that something can be said or done before you've actually chosen the words or manner of doing it. In fact, it is kind of a skill I had to build up, I used to be very bad at writing and speaking but have always excelled in math and somewhat in the sciences. Even now the way that I write or say things follows either the logic of my own thought processes or of someone elses that I have in mind, rather than my original free thoughts. Really though I can only speak for myself.",
"I wish I had a source but I remember hearing (on the radio) an anthropologist's theory on how language developed (before the evolutionary emergence of the tongue) through pointing. By pointing, we are essentially able to cast rays in our environments. Man was given a finger for an eye. Pointing to prey in the distance, on the horizon, to indicate a hunt, pointing to edible plants while foraging, pointing to ones self and then something to indicate ownership. The point is, eventually, after we had eaten enough protein and someone mutated a tongue to enjoy more of it (or whatever), there became the ability to produce consistently different sounds with the larynx and tongue and with it, the need to assign sounds to everything that had heretofore only been pointed at (you can imagine all confusion that caused).",
"You know how when you think of a word you think of a picture/feeling/event that goes with it? Well without the words as a little kid and as an older kid learning English that is what my thinking was like, and then I would try to find the best word I knew for that picture/feeling/event and string it into a sentence, and then say it aloud. We thought in sensory input and perceived consequences. If I think in a language it's because it helps me formalize my ideas, but I've ever \"thought\" in Ukrainian, Russian or English - but if OP only knows English it's only natural to assume that's what they do all their thinking in.",
"I wanted to chime in here. I've never been able to accurately describe this, but I don't have an internal dialogue like most people describe the way they think. I am usually only thinking of words when I need to speak, read or write. \n\nMost of the time my thoughts are highly visual where I imagine objects coming together and solving whatever situation my brain is presented with. I never say words to myself in my head. \n\nThis also helps when composing music in my head, because I don't have to think of things in terms of words. \n\nI still don't feel like I've explained anything\n\nTl;DR I do not have an internal monologue.",
"I did a research paper in my undergrad AI major on a related topic. That was about 15 years ago, so I barely remember what I found, but...\n\nThe research was on weather chimpanzees can learn a language. My final argument was that they couldn't learn a language (based on current research) because they were unable to imagine and think abstract thoughts on subjects. It turns out that language and imagination are very closely linked. I wish I could give you more details but if you try to find out what language itself is, I'm sure you'll find some related literature.",
"Impossible to say. In order to draw a limit to language one would have to say what makes this the limit, one would have to step outside of language, as it were, and describe it from the outside. But from there, no description can be made, since there is no language.\n\nIn the same way, we can not get what goes on in the minds of animals, like we can other people, because while we can formulate the animal's desires this will always be done through human methods of expression.",
"We are primarily sensory thinkers and use language as a tool scondarily. Here is neat little exams of pure thought without language. \n\nWhich way do you turn on your faucet to take a bath ? \n\nYou probably did not think a direction first. You visuized the knob and visualized your hand reaching and turning your knob to figure out which direction. Then you determined if it was left or right. Your mind used visual and motor memory then converted that to words.",
"In Lacanian theory, language defines our reality. Without language, our thoughts would be incoherent and vague. You know how people think, \"I wish I could talk to animals...?\" Well you can, just point and grunt. Their lack of language limits thought. What you understand from a dog's barking or tail wagging is probably similar to what other dog's understand from that as well. It's not like \"woof\" translates to something in English.",
"In one of Stephen Pinker's books he discusses this and calls the language of internal thought \"Mentalese\" because its not a specific language along the lines of spoken or written languages. we only think ideas or thoughts are in whatever are native language may be because we have to cconvert the mentalese into a spoken or written language innorder to describe it to others. Or something to this effect.",
"You're not thinking in English, or any other language. Haven't you ever said something and then realized it wasn't what you meant? If you were thinking in English, you'd say exactly what you meant by definition.\n\nAlso, if language were essential to thought, how would we translate from one to another? It's not even clear what translation would *mean.*",
"Ever see someone you'd like to fuck? You think about fucking them, about what you'd do, what they'd do. You don't think about your conversation, or even about the words needed during sex. You don't think of the words used to describe sex. You think of the sex. You think in images, in ideas, not in language.",
"Do all of you go around thinking in language all day? I mean, most stuff you think about isn't in a certain language.\n\nI can forget a word while trying to communicate my thoughts, but even without that word I still know exactly what I mean.",
"To put it simply, there was an ask reddit question similar to this. Someone who was deaf and never heard their or anyone else's voice said that they think in pictures and images. So, I guess it'd be like that.",
"I speak two languages natively. \n \nI need an explanation. How do you think in english? Do you have some sort of internal monologue/dialogue? \n \nI've never really talked to myself in either language. I just kind of feel the concepts.",
"Language is an instinct to humans. It didn't develop after our current brain structure evolved, it developed along with our current brain. \n\nLanguage is embedded into our whole thought process more than we can ever conceive.",
"Am I the only one here that doesn't use language for thinking??? This is freaking me out. I imagine using words and such when you think must be very limiting and inflexible.",
"I'm always surprised that people don't realize that you don't need a formal language to think complex thoughts. Since I am able to write this sentence, before it was a complex thought.",
"Seriously.. do people actually think in sentences? When characters in TV shows are talking to themselves inside their heads.. that's actually based on what people really do? That sounds fucking insane",
"Most people don't think in words. I don't, except when it is something that needs to be written down or said to someone.",
"Also, how do different languages shape thought differently?\n\nChinese?\n\nRussian?\n\nSpanish?\n\nMiddle-estern?\n\nEtc..",
"However those thoughts might be, I'm sure that's how animals think as well.",
"I think they were more like feels or motivations..."
] |
What is the Eastern philosophical concept of Wu? | [
"The short version is that it's the concept of everything being interconnected and interdependent. This, in turn, is supposed to help people be more aware of how their actions affect others, because other people's actions affect them as well. \n\nA similar concept is the \"butterfly effect\", where a tiny change leads to bigger and bigger consequences, often too big for the original actor to realize."
] |
How are instincts inherited to the following generation and is it possible to modificate and/ or create them? | [
"As far as I know, no one truly understands how instincts work. It is one thing to have a reflex, but there are complex behaviors (such as baby sea turtles crawling towards the ocean) are much tougher to explain. \n\nThere was a recent neuroscience paper that came out that may help. Basically, they fear conditioned some male animals to a certain smell (i.e. made them scared of the smell). They then had these males sire offspring. The offspring learned to be afraid of the smell much quicker than would normally be the case. They examined their olfactory system, and found that these offspring had increased receptors that were specific to the smell their Dad's had been made afraid of. Basically, making the Dad's afraid of a smell resulted in their offspring being particularly sensitive to that smell.\n\nThis is called epigenetics: when experiences result in altered gene expression. Therefore, it is indeed possible, in a sense, for a \"memory\" to be passed on, although it isn't the memory per se, it is altered gene expression.",
"Instincts are hard-wired into the brain and are genetically inherited. Think of genes that encode for proteins that wire the brain during development. The way nerve cells are wired with each other defines the behavior (at least that is what we think). The more complex the brain of the animal, the less of a role do instincts play."
] |
Why was 911 selected as the number to dial in case of emergency? | [
"They wanted a short, easy to remember number, but also one that was not as likely to be accidentally dialed. It also needed to be fast to dial during the era of rotary phones when the system was first designed. So a 3 digit number starting with 9 and then using the fastest to dial numbers of 1 was chosen."
] |
How do selective hiring companies not get sued? | [
"Because their business model is built around having females. It's like how Hooters can hire only attractive women because they're technically hiring models who just happen to waitress, and being attractive is a job qualification for being a model. Or how a man can't claim discrimination that a strip club won't hire him.",
"It *is* accepted as sex discrimination by every definition but there are a bunch of loopholes which make it legal, plus it's semi-justified."
] |
Flashing a Verizon Phone to get Prepaid Unlimited 3G. | [
"It is stealing a paid service, one way or another, likely by cloning one paid phone."
] |
Tourettes | [
"I have Tourette's. First off - curse words are a very small minority. Most tics are physical. It's kind of like an itch, or a compulsion. It's like a heat in my joints that gets worse and worse until I give in. Being distracted helps a lot and it is much worse when I'm stressed or hyper,etc. \n\nI do have some vocal tics but they have never been curse words, more like hums or whistles or that clucking sound with your tongue. Most of my tics involve popping joints, cracking knuckles, stretching limbs, \"blinking hard\" or other subtle movements. \n\nI'm 30 now and pretty good at hiding most of these while still scratching that itch. There is medication that helps but the side effects are too much for me and I find it worse than just dealing with the tics."
] |
Why is there urgency for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and why do recent jobs numbers prevent it? | [
"[EDIT] tl;dr - Urgency to raise rates comes from the financial industry which stands to make money from higher rates. Job numbers prevent that by speaking directly to the legislative mandate of The Federal Reserve not the personal interests of bankers.\n\nFirst of all, low and high are relative terms so when we say that rates are currently low what we mean is that, by historical standards, rates are lower than they typically have been. \n\nWe're better off asking the question \"what should the rate be in our current economy?\" The answer to that question is likely variable and changing over time. It's difficult to say what it should be, and different people are going to have different opinions. Often times those opinions are motivated or colored by personal interests and biases.\n\nOne method for identifying if rates are currently too low or too high is to look at inflation. If rates are too low, inflation begins to grow and run away at an increasing pace. If rates are too high inflation lowers and we start to see signs of potential deflation. Using inflation in this capacity helps to mitigate pre-existing bias that we might otherwise have about what we believe rates should be.\n\nThe \"urgency\" to raise rates is coming largely out of a single sector of the professional class, namely: people in the financial industry who would stand to gain (at least in the short term) from higher interest rates. They would get to charge more on the loans they're making and consequently enjoy higher profit margins. These individuals have a lot of money, power, influence, and most notably the ears of media personnel. Their opinion is often reported as near-fact with little to no contra-evidence printed. \n\n(In defense of the media, economics is hard and confusing and reporting it earnestly and accurately ends up with boring publications like The Economist. It doesn't work well on the front page of _URL_1_).\n\nIt's not well reported in the news but their opinions are not widely held among the professional economic community. Here is a recent article by Paul Krugman highlighting exactly that (Krugman is a well respected, Nobel-winning economics professor. His opinion should carry at least as much weight as anyone else's in the industry). _URL_2_\nHis point is that inflation is still super low, in fact lower than the Fed's own stated inflationary target.\n\n\nThe simple fact is that there is little appetite outside of one vocal and influential group for raising rates. There is nothing in the empirical data suggesting that our economy or the global markets \"want\" rates higher. Inflation is low and US Bonds continue to perform well on the world markets. The only urgency comes from the fact that rates have been so much lower than historical standards, and for so long, people just feel like it's time to raise them.\n\nThe reason job numbers prevent it has to do with something known as the \"dual mandate\". _URL_0_. \n\nBasically, the Federal agency in charge of these rates is the Federal Reserve (i.e. The Fed). The Fed has a legislative mandate to maximize employment while maintaining a moderate inflation rate (for economic reasons, minimizing inflation is bad. We want some small amount of inflation). Essentially, as is noted in the article above, they don't know what the employment rate should be so they do things to try to lower it until inflation starts to rise in response. At that point they know it's as low as the economy will allow and they stop stimulating to avoid run-away inflation.\n\nAgain, it ties back to inflation as the key indicator about what the Fed should be doing. As /u/mbilical noted, low rates generally means business borrowing, growing, and hiring more. If there is no inflationary pressure to slow that process then most economists feel the Fed should continue to keep rates low in order to stimulate economic growth and hiring.",
"Interest rates are a cost of borrowing money from banks. For anything from computers, to cars, houses, and large construction projects, both private and public. When the Fed lowers rates they are indicating their belief that (a) economy has slack labor or resources that should or could be utilized and (b) there is very low risk of inflation or possibly indicators of deflation on the price of goods and wages. A way to encourage job growth, stave off deflation rather quickly and directly is by lowering the costs to borrow money.\n\nOther methods of influencing the overall economy the Fed can directly take part in include\n1. Raising the amount of money banks must keep in reserve either in their own vaults or at the Fed in case of bank runs. I believe the current ratio is 10% meaning for $100 you deposit, the bank has to keep $10 saved in their own accounts. \n2. Increase or decrease the money supply. This can also have inflationary or deflationary impacts on prices and wages. \n\nAs for the urgency that's very much up for debate. The debate for raising rates is that the economy has recovered enough and is strong enough that to let it continue growing at is current rate would result in inflation. Others argue that the current rate of growth can continue for quite some time given the extremely low rates for borrowing right now and the current level employment levels of able bodied people is still low relative to pre-2008 conditions.",
"Low interest rates encourage spending and consumption and discourage savings and investment. \n\nWhen government does all this fiddling with interest rates it causes malinvestments. We see this every time there's a bubble that bursts whether it was the stock market crash that led to the great depression, the dot com bubble, the housing bubble, or this new housing/auto/student loan bubble we are inflating as we speak.\n\nGovernment has as much of a right to set the \"price\" for borrowing money as it does setting the price of shoes, cheeseburgers, or a pint of beer. Of course since the fed has been fixing interest rates for the last 100 years most everyone accepts it as both good and necessary to the survival of the economy. Had government been setting the price of beer for the last century no one would believe the free market capable of determining efficient prices for alcohol without government controls.\n\nInterest rates on savings and money market accounts are basically zero. This gives people no incentive to save. Why put $10,000 in the bank when at the end of the year you have approx. $10,001? By the time you factor inflation your money is actually worth LESS than it was when you put it in the bank to save it. The money people save is what is lent to businesses for investment. When money isn't being saved there's nothing to invest.\n\nConversely when the government sets extremely low interest rates they are encouraging you to borrow. Borrow for a huge house or to buy a new car even though your current car works just fine.\n\nThis is exactly why americans have a negative savings rate and at the same time more than 1 trillion dollars in vehicle debt. Add to this student loan debt, housing debt, credit card debt, etc, etc. \n\nA full 25% of US households have a NEGATIVE net worth even when you take into account all the equity in their homes and retirement accounts. \n\nThis means if you are a newly minted 18 year old who just walked out of their parent's house with a 20-dollar bill in your pocket and no debt congratulations you are already richer than one quarter of the entire US population.\n\nAmericans need to be saving and investing rather than spending and consuming. Our consumer, debt ridden society is unsustainable."
] |
why does the quick-E-mart on the corner sell copper scrubbers with the drug paraphernalia? | [
"Copper scrubbers are an essential part of a homemade crack pipe.\n\nYou buy one of those little roses in a glass tube, take the ends off, toss the rose, shove a little copper scrubber in, insert crack, and light.",
"You take the scrubber and cut a piece and put t in the little glass rose (crack pipe) so you can put the rock in the end to smoke it."
] |
Why do we get shakey? | [
"Electrolytes. Salt, magnesium, and the such... Like an engine will shudder on Empty with no fuel."
] |
How do they manage to find precise recordings to make those composite/mash-up videos, of hundreds of clips of a person speaking certain words, to make them sing a song, etc? | [
"I've actually also wondered the same thing and I think I have an answer. I don't know this for certain but I imagine that what the people do is find several speeches by the figure they are using and then find the transcripts of the speeches. This is not normally very difficult particularly for public figures such as the president. They then just need to ctrl-f the speech to find the words they want and then go to that location of the video. They can then cut that part of the video out and rinse and repeat. It's still time-consuming but it's much faster than just blindly watching hundreds of videos."
] |
Why are we more attracted to a person when they're tan? | [
"Are we? This seems much more like a personal preference than a universal truth. I searched for your question and found an answer [here](_URL_0_)."
] |
What is happening in Turkey? | [
"A lot. Maybe a bit of a non specific question that."
] |
Why do we have accents? | [
"Speech and how it's learned is basically the longest running game of telephone. Things get passed down and eventually someone hears something slightly wrong and says it slightly wrong or with different emphasis. It keeps going for generations and impacts the population. \n\nSince populations of people (Southern, Texas, New York, etc) aren't in contact with each other as much as they are in contact with themselves, each one changes at different rates and in different ways. \n\nSpecifically for the US, since there are so many cultures, people tend to settle together. And they bring their language with them. That language has certain ways they pronounce letter combinations and vowels, so when they learn to speak English, they learn with a mix of their native language in it. \n\nAnd it just keeps mutating like that over generations."
] |
Why can blank CD's hold the same length of music at different bitrates? | [
"> why can a CD that can hold 80 minutes of 320 kbps not otherwise hold 200 minutes of 128 kbps?\n\n\nBecause CD audio doesn't have a bitrate the way MP3s do. It's raw, uncompressed audio (essentially the same as a .wav file on your computer). So both the 128 kbps mp3 and the 320 kbps mp3 will be uncompressed and converted to wav format before being written to the CD, at which point their equivalent bitrates are the same.",
"If you record a CD as an audio CD, it *always* writes the music as 44.1kHz, 16-bit **uncompressed** audio. If the source was a low-quality MP3, you just end up with low-quality audio recorded at 44.1kHz, 16-bit.\n\nIf you write it as a *data* CD, you can fit different amounts of audio on there. Many modern CD players can handle MP3s."
] |
Why is the presence of complex organic molecules discovered on Comet 67P and other objects not enough evidence to definitively say that life exists beyond Earth? | [
"Complex organic molecules can form and exist without life. By complex, we are talking simple amino acids, nitrogenous bases, super-simple polycarbons. These are not the same as the long polymers you would get from carbon-based life.",
"Complex organic molecules are a precursor to life, but not life in themselves. It just means there are carbon or similar molecules with many parts, which is essential to life, but doesn't stem *from* life. it's the other way around."
] |
In video editing, what's the difference between Drop-Frame timecode, and Non-Drop-Frame timecode? | [
"In non-drop-frame, there are exactly 30 frames in every second of footage, i.e., the timecode endings for every second go\n\n :00, :01, :02, ... :29.\n\nYou should only use non-drop-frame timecodes if your footage is 30.000 frames per second.\n\nIn drop-frame, the first second of every minute not divisible by ten misses the first two frames, i.e., 54 seconds every hour have only 28 timecode endings like \n\n ;02, ;03, ;04, ... ;29\n\nThus 108 timecodes are missing per hour. Otherwise there would be 108,000 timecodes per hour so the drop-frame system removes exactly 1 in 1000 timecodes.\n\nNote that no frames are dropped, just that some timecodes are missing so that frame 00;01;59;29 is followed by frame 00;02;00;02. Semicolons are used instead of colons to highlight what's going on.\n\nThis is done because NTSC has only about 29.97 frames per second. In fact NTSC is exactly 1 part in 1001 short of 30 frames per second so the drop-frame notation, using 1 part in 1000, is not exactly right, but it's close enough."
] |
Why is there is demand for high frames per second in video games, but it's ok for movies to stick to 24 fps? Is there a visible difference between the two mediums? | [
"Movie motion isn't designed to feel completely real, it has a bigger than life dreamlike feel that comes from the motion blur that occurs at 24 frames per second. Most games on the other hand are trying to be immersive and give you the feeling of being there and that requires the motion to be smoother. \n\nWhile not a direct game to movie comparison, watch a movie and then watch a soap opera or a late night talk show. You can clearly see and feel a difference and that is because the movie with its dreamy 24fps and the soap or talk show which is running at a more natural 30fps.",
"Movies are captured from real world, games need to calculate each world position they show.\n\nThis means with games, you see 24 very sharp still images of a virtual world. With film, you see blurred image of many instants of time per each frame, which makes end result look blurrier, but also significantly more fluid.\n\nSo for example, if you tracked a dot moving across a screen through 5 frames, in a game you would see dot sit still in the left side of the screen, then the same pixel teleports to 25% of the screen to the right, then to the center of the screen, then to 75% of the screen, and then to the right side.\n\nIn a movie, you would see a blur that would start at left side of the screen and end up at right side of the screen. This would be much smoother-looking. Games actually try to recreate this to extent but I'm not sure how far current gen efforts are regarding this.\n\nAnother reason is that many games are more awkward to play since low framerate means you have higher delay between pressing button and action happening on screen. Psychological studies show that if you keep delay short enough(I think it was 50 milliseconds) brain won't notice, but having it go above that is disorienting and can even cause nausea to some people. The longer the delay, the worse it gets.\n\nLow frame rate means that delay between frames is longer. 24fps means a frame is drawn once every 40 milliseconds or so, so if you press button right after frame is drawn, the fastest you can possibly see your action on screen is 40 milliseconds after. This fully adds to all other sources of latency, like delay of transmitting screen data to the screen, gpu processing game data to render the image, processor registering input at all, and any delay from your input device. For movies, none of this matters since you aren't in control and don't need to see effects of your actions on screen, ever.",
"Games are interactive, movies are not. \n\nWith a slower game framerate, you are getting laggier visual information and input. The difference is only in miliseconds, but that is pretty important in fast paced gameplay situations."
] |
What does it mean: "underwriting a security" in regards to banking and finance? | [
"When corporation wants to raise money from the financial markets they contact an investment bank to issue a security (e.g. a stock or a bond). For example, if ACME corp wants to raise $1B of capital through a bond offering they will call up an investment bank or a group of investment banks (called a syndicate) and hire them to \"underwrite that security\". Here's what the transaction looks like. \n\n1. ACME gets their $1B of cash up front directly from their Investment Bank\n2. The Investment Bank Receives the securities, in this case, bond certificates from ACME corporation agreeing to pay back the $1B over a set period of time with pre-determined interest payments (coupons)\n3. The bank uses its sales and trading network to re-sell the bonds to its network of institutional investors. They typically do this at a slight mark-up, but the bank also assumes the risk of the bonds not selling well and they will occasionally (read: very rarely, but still a very real possibility) lose money on the deal. \n4. The bank also typically agrees to support the price of the debt offering in the secondary market by providing liquidity for investors up to a certain point. \n\nThere are lots of nuances to this process, but that covers the basics.",
"This is a pretty [good explanation:](_URL_0_)\n\n\nSecurities underwriting refers to the process by which investment banks raise investment capital from investors on behalf of corporations and governments that are issuing securities (both equity and debt capital). The services of an underwriter are typically used during a public offering.\nThis is a way of a newly issued security, such as stocks or bonds, to investors. A syndicate of banks (the lead managers) underwrites the transaction, which means they have taken on the risk of distributing the securities. Should they not be able to find enough investors, they will have to hold some securities themselves. Underwriters make their income from the price difference (the \"underwriting spread\") between the price they pay the issuer and what they collect from investors or from broker-dealers who buy portions of the offering.\n\nELI5 - Like any type of lending, the bank is taking on risk but instead of the collateral being a house or boat the asset in this case is part of the company where they try to resale it for more than they bought it for. The risk is that they can succeed. If not, they hold the ownership themselves.\n\nSource - Work for a Top 5 U.S bank (in technology, not business)"
] |
How fast are things moving in the human body? | [
"it varies depending on what part of \"everything\" you're talking about.\n\nThe main things, though, are the impulses fired from the brain down through the nervous system, which take some fraction of a millisecond, and the time it takes for your muscles to move your hand, which depends on the strength of your muscles, mass of your arm, and a few other factors.\n\nMost of the rest of your body isn't really involved beyond what's already going on; blood is pumping through your arm at what is probably a very-slightly-higher-than-resting rate due to the light activity, but it was pumping through there anyway, it just sped up a tiny bit since you weren't at a rest anymore. \n\nThe muscles in your legs likely don't move at all, nor the muscles in your abs. Your digestive tract will continue digesting whatever's in there at its normal rate under most circumstances, unless your fingernails cause you to panic and have an adrenal response that temporarily slows/stops digestion and potentially voids your bowels."
] |
Can ship execute swift maneuvers in space if it has a lot of power? Or will it always move slowly? | [
"More power can easily translate to faster maneuverability. Modern spaceships use small thrusters placed around the exterior of the ship to turn. When a thruster is facing anywhere other than directly towards or away from the center of mass, activating it will change the direction that the object is facing. You might compare this to a tugboat maneuvering a large cargo shop into a dock. The tugboat will push on say the back left of the shop turning the front left. Now if you replaced the tugboat with an aircraft carrier, the cargo ship is going to move faster when it hits. So yes more powerful manuvering thrusters will speed up your turning and execution speed."
] |
How are we able to make an emergency call on a cellphone with no service or provider? | [
"I studied a little bit of this in college, and the other answers I'm seeing may not be what you're looking for.\n\nYour phone, sim card or no, is talking to all the towers around you all the time if its able to. Usually the conversation is something along the lines of:\n\n* Cell Phone: \"Hi Tower!\"\n* Tower: \"Are you a Verizon/AT & T/Sprint/etc phone?\"\n* Cell Phone: \"Nope!\"\n* Tower: \"Then we have nothing more to talk about.\"\n\nHowever, all towers are listening for a very specific packet of information a phone spits out when it tries to put through an emergency call. This packet precludes all the questions a tower might ask and means that if its at all possible, the tower will route that call. When you make an emergency call on a phone the conversation goes more like:\n\n* Cell Phone: \"Hi Tower!\"\n* Tower: \"Are you a Verizon/AT & T/Sprint/etc phone?\"\n* Cell Phone: \"This is an EMERGENCY!!\"\n* Tower: \"Oh, ok let me put you through.\"\n\nThis also means that if a tower is heavily trafficked, like one in a big city, it will give priority to that emergency call.\n\nCould calling be free? Functionally probably. You're seeing more plans that are dirt cheap and have unlimited calling and texting. Its the *data* thats the big money maker. But at the end of the day, the towers still need to be built, maintained, and connected to networks. So you still need to pay *something*.\n\nTL;DR: When you make an emergency call the tower handles it very differently, bypassing a lot of artificial roadblocks that prevent you from making normal calls.",
"It's the law. The FCC requires that any call to 911 be put through, regardless of the carrier.Your SIM card just identifies your phone to the network. The phone itself has the capability to transmit the call and the network will pick it up. If the network can't identify the phone, or the service is invalid, it refuses the connection, unless it is going to 911.",
"The telecom carriers have that enabled to make sure people can get a hold of emergency personnel no matter what the circumstances. They'd look like assholes if they didn't"
] |
Considering various backgrounds and experience differentiation, how would an Equal Wages - Gender Wage Gap law work? | [
"The wages of every employee is publicly posted in the workplace. Everyone knows what everyone else makes.\n\nThe rest will sort itself out."
] |
Why and when exactly was the death penalty reinstated in the US after being abolished in 1972? Is it really because "murder rates soared" following its abolition, as some claim? | [
"The death penalty wasn't abolished in 1972. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that certain *specific inconsistent applications* of the death penalty violated the \"cruel and unusual punishment\" portion of the constitution. So the states voluntarily suspended the death penalty while they worked to bring their policy in line with the requirements set forth in the justices' opinions."
] |
What happens if I use a top loader washing detergent in a front loader machine? | [
"I did this by accident once a year or two ago and a giant meteor crashed into Russia.",
"Please do not try this, it could have devastating effects on us all",
"detergent is detergent, it's like saying \"i drink water in a bowl intead of a glass !\"",
"Use a little less and do an extra rinse if needed."
] |
How do scientists know there are x unknown animal species if they weren't discovered yet? | [
"If I recall from ecology, basically what happens is that you can chart how many new species have been found each year (adjusted for how many people/man-hours were spent actively looking), and the resulting graph shows a gentle curve and leveling off over time - indicating a point in the future where it's flat (meaning we're not discovering any new species). So, the space between where we are and where that graph ends up going flat is a rough estimate of how many species we probably have left to find.",
"Look up Angraecum sesquipedale, it's a pretty orchid and a great example of one of the ways that scientists can accurately infer the existence of a species they haven't observed directly yet. \n\nIn short, it's a flower with a nectary several inches deep - it couldn't have evolved without a moth that had a long enough proboscis to reach the nectar at the bottom. The moth was discovered quite a while later, but because of the way evolution works, they were certain of finding it."
] |
How do we remember tastes? | [
"Our sense of taste is closely related with the sense of smell, so much in fact, that if you have stuffed nose, things will start tasting bland.\n\nHaven't heard about link with memory. Do you mean this [article](_URL_0_)? If so, it explains that we have preference for things from our childhood because they didn't kill us. There is no need of risking new stuff, if old stuff managed to get us that far.",
"Memories are just info stored in your brain. When you \"see\" an image in your head, your brain is really just tricking you into quasi seeing the information that you're recalling. So remembering a picture is really not any different that remembering a smell/taste. Just like storing a picture vs an Mp3 on a hard drive; they might be different files, but they're stored as data."
] |
What's the difference between the Islamic State and the Taliban? | [
"The answer is both yes and no. Both groups have religiously influenced ideologies that are fused with cultural/ethnic group identities.\n\nThe Taliban are ethnically [Pashtun](_URL_1_), a tribe that predates modern states but that currently exists in Afghanistan. From the beginning, they were outwardly quite religious. Many of the Taliban's leaders were clerics or teachers (the roles are often combined). Still, it would be wrong to describe the Taliban like al-Qaeda, which is an almost exclusively religious group. Yes, the Taliban are Muslim. Yes, they practice a hard-liner brand of Islam influenced by [Wahhabism](_URL_0_). But they are also a very ethnic group with local interests and motivations. For example, the Taliban is deeply involved in the Afghan drug trade, which is *haram* (forbidden) in Islam.\n\nThen we have ISIL/ISIS/IS. Once again, it would be wrong to simply label them as religious terrorists. They do indeed practice terrorism, and they do espouse an especially noxious brand of religiously motivated hatred. But the interesting thing about ISIS is that they do not always attempt to justify their actions on the basis of religion. Al-Qaeda, on the other hand, took pains to constantly rationalize their killings and atrocities through scripture. ISIS revels in its violence and brutality. There are exceptions, of course -- a recent IS pamphlet suggested that it would not be unlawful under sharia law (Islamic jurisprudence) to rape non-Muslim women.\n\nIS is difficult to describe because it too is deeply influenced by secular elements in society. Many of the young men fighting with IS today are Sunni. That's significant because Saddam was Sunni, and marginalized Iraqi Shiites despite the fact that they were the overwhelming majority of Iraq. When the regime fell, the government purged their ranks of Sunnis altogether, leaving a large number of well-trained and dissatisfied Iraqis out on the streets. That was a recipe for the early years of the insurgency in Iraq. Sunnis were eventually reincorporated into Nouri Malaki's government, but then mostly expelled as Malaki tried to consolidate his power. As you can tell, there is a lot of sectarian, tribal, and local animosity in the society that transcends religious differences.\n\nBoth Iraq and Syria have relatively robust traditions of secularist regimes -- the Alawites and the Baathists (ruling parties of Syria and Iraq respectively) clamped down on religious government and emphasized nationalism and pan-Arabism. This is in stark contrast to the situation in Afghanistan, where the idea of a \"state\" per se never really took hold.\n\nTL;DR: IS and the Taliban are two very different groups with very different compositions. They should not be understood as purely religious organizations, but groups that are influenced by their regional origins as well.",
"They share the same ideologies but the Taliban's area of interest is in Afghanistan and ISIS's area of interest is, for now, Iraq and Syria, hence the name Islamic State of Iraq and Syria."
] |
How come on the show "Drugs Inc." they can interview a drug dealer without him getting arrested (when he clearly admits to his crimes) | [
"Saying you've committed a crime at some point isn't enough evidence to convict you of a crime. He could just say in court that he was saying it for entertainment, or fun, or was joking, or any of a million things.",
"A confession is evidence, but not proof a crime was committed. A sworn statement to the police is very strong evidence, telling your friends is weaker, and bragging to a stranger to get on TV is about as weak as a confession can get.\n\nAnd you can only be charged for *specific* crimes...you sold drugs to this person on this date at this location. Merely saying \"I sell drugs\" is not specific enough to be charged with anything."
] |
How did they send people into space in the early days of space exploration without computers and GPS technology? | [
"Well, there were computers, though they were far more primitive. Often, this meant trajectories had to be calculated by hand.\n\nNavigation was another matter. Though GPS didn't exist, ground stations could locate space probes based on radio signals, similar to Gps. Otherwise astronauts had to use a sextant to navigate by the stars.",
"They did the math on paper and then used the results to program primitive computers. There were a lot of incredibly smart people involved in the space program and they did things the hard way. Do the math, design the computer, program it, watch it explode, do the math again.\n\n[Here is a picture of Margaret Hamilton standing next to listings of the actual Apollo Guidance Computer source code.](_URL_0_)",
"It's all just math. It's difficult math, but you don't need computers. They used pencils, slide rules and their brains.",
"They calculated everything manually. If you want to go to space you need to reach orbit. This requires a set of maneuvers that can easily be done without computers. Essentially you go up straight for a while and once you reach a certain height you accelerate in an angle to get enough speed to be on a circular orbit. If you are slightly of you will be on an orbit that its elliptical but that's not a huge problem. To get back you fire your engines against the direction you are going in until you enter the atmosphere. Then you hope to be close to where you want to be..... this is of course over simplified ... With a few calculations ahead you can narrow things down quite a bit."
] |
How people make a living off investing | [
"1. They don't make steady income off investments... it's an irregular earning pattern. They may have a great day and make thousands or they may have a bad day and lose thousands.\n\n2. Options are contracts to buy or sell stock at a certain price on a certain day in the future. They go up and down in value depending on the value of the underlying stock and likelihood of the option being \"in the money\", ie. paying out on the expiration day. They can swing much more volatility than the underlying stock, and as a result can pay off big. But they can also move the other way and because of the limited time horizon can also very quickly lose everything invested. \n\n3. No, it's not possible to start with $1000. Even $100,000 is virtually impossible to invest as a primary means of income. Making a living off investing is a classic \"takes money to make money\" endeavor.",
"It's boring, but the only really reliable way to make money investing is to invest a bunch of money and then just wait for 10-20 years. Don't mess with it. Messing with it doesn't help.\n\nBelieve it or not, Fidelity did a study on this, and they found that their best investors were [dead people](_URL_0_). Because they didn't mess with it."
] |
Why does counting sheep help you go to sleep? | [
"It is more a cliche about counting sheep being boring and tiring than actually being an effective sleep aid."
] |
If diet coke has 0 calories and 0 sugar, why is it still unhealthy? | [
"Because the citric acid in soft drinks deteriorates your teeth, and messes up your bodies natural acidity. As well as the sugar replacement Aspertame, which tricks not only your taste buds but your body into thinking it's real sugar, causing unnecessary insulin to be produced. Research is still inconclusive on how bad Aspertame really is though.",
"Because it has no nutrients.\n\n(And usually the zero calories is due to rounding, so it still usually ends up having a few calories, which is still mostly negligible unless you drink a lot of it)"
] |
Are there cultures where marriage doesn't exist? | [
"I'm hoping somebody will name one for you but my money is on \"no\" — see e.g. _URL_1_ — mainly because marriage can appear in [so many different forms](_URL_0_)."
] |
Why aren't there hedge funds for middle class / poor people? | [
"Hedge funds can only accept a certain number of customers by law, so they will generally only take wealthy people. A lot of them have minimum buy ins.",
"Because clients require time and effort. Each client requires a certain amount of personal attention - at the least, a phone call once in a while. An investor with $10 million might need as much as 20 hours a year. 100,000 tiny clients might only need an hour a year - which is 100,000 hours. Say it's only 15 minutes, or one phone call a year: that's still 25,000 hours or 32 full time people just to say \"hi\" to your clients once a year.\n\nAnd in reality, it's much more than that: small investors tend to be extremely nervous. Markets go down and you will be flooded with worried investors. Most big investors don't worry about market fluctuations and don't need much hand-holding.\n\nBy the way, to invest $10 million in a hedge fund, you'd need to have investable assets in the $100 million range. It's extremely high risk and something that you only put a small part of your assets in.",
"High yield investment instruments are also high *risk* investment instruments. In the US and many other countries, it is not legal for poor or most middle class people to make these high risk investments; the theory is that the hedge fund cannot guarantee it won't make a bad decision and wipe out their savings.",
"Most hedge funds are also vastly overrated, for what it's worth. Study after study shows that the majority of actively-managed funds fail to beat a simple index fund in the long run."
] |
. In the big picture what will raising the age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 really accomplish? | [
"To be perfectly honest, young people are dumb, impulsive & have a poor understanding of the consequences of their actions. The general principle behind gun control is to make it harder for impulsive people to get their hands on guns - if something is illegal to purchase and now costs 3x what it did when it was legal, you're less likely to buy it for stupid shit.",
"Basically it adds 3 years to the age at which a person can legally obtain a gun. Nothing more really. Would be interesting to see how many crimes are committed with legally obtained guns though"
] |
Why do Kenyans consistently outperform other nationalities in long distance running? | [
"One thing to keep in mind is that the Kenyans who are winning are doing just a few minutes better than the top runners from other countries - it's not as though Kenyans are significantly faster.\n\nBut there are a lot of reasons they're good at marathons (Ethiopians too).\n\nFor one, Kenya is a relatively poor country. This means a lot of things:\n\n1) Most of the jobs are subsistence farming, i.e. a very physical activity ([Wikipedia](_URL_0_) says 75% of working Kenyans made their living on the land). As such, the average Kenyan is in good physical shape.\n\n2) Because it's a relatively poor country, there isn't a lot of obesity like there is in other countries. The average Kenyan has a lower BMI.\n\n3) There isn't a lot of infrastructure, so they travel by foot. Running is faster than walking, and if you have a long distance to go, running saves time. So the average Kenyan has some experience with running to begin with.\n\n4) Unrelated to their economy, Kenya has a higher altitude than many countries.\n\nIf you combine all of these things (better physical shape, lower BMI, plenty of physical activity, and a higher altitude), you end up with a group of folks with a high VO2 max. This means these folks can absorb more oxygen when breathing, which is key to marathoning, or doing any physical activity for an extended period of time.\n\nSo that explains why they're good long-distance runners.\n\nAs to why they compete in so many marathons, remember again that Kenya is a relatively poor country with very few non-farming jobs, and very little by way of secondary education. Not too many ways to make a better life for yourself. But if you know that you're a good runner, and other people from your country have gone off and won marathons (many of which have monetary prizes!), it sounds like a good thing to practice towards and be good at.",
"I've also read somewhere that a large percentage of the Kenyans who have performed so well in endurance racing come from one specific ethnic group in Kenya. This group apparently has genetically adapted to have a more efficient cardiovascular system due to where they live and how they live, and this has led to their success. I don't remember where I read this and maybe it's not true, so anyone who knows more about it please correct me if I'm wrong or elaborate.",
"A few reasons:\n\n* Lots of Kenya is high altitude, meaning people who live there have adapted and have more efficient respiratory and cardiovascular systems.\n\n* Long distance running is very cheap to train. A country like Kenya can't afford expensive athletic facilities, so they focus on cheap sports. Runners only need shoes and space."
] |
How are naked four-legged mountain goats successfully able to traverse mountainous cliffs, while two-legged humans require climbing gear? | [
"Well, they're not naked (they have hair) and they've got four feet instead of two... which is a help, not a hindrance.\n\nThey also have uniquely designed hooves to help them balance and climb over rough terrain, and they're far more dexterous than we are. They're also acclimated to the habitat.",
"You've already had the proper answers but it's also worth pointing out that goats which evolved in this sort of environment clearly had ancestors for whom great balance and coordination was an advantage. Hence, goats who can climb.\n\nBut not infallibly. I doubt you get to hear about the goats that *fall off*. If a goat falls off a cliff, and there's no-one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"
] |
Why aren't we able to mark SMS's as unread? | [
"That would actually be very easy. All you need is a button that does the opposite of the function that marks the message as read.\n\nI could try seeing if I can modify an open source messenger to mark the messages as unread.\n\nOne thing you have to think about though is how the unread property is stored: a developer could either store the read or unread property in each individual message or they could store the number of messages received from a contact since the last time their conversation was open and just tell the user the last (x) messages were unread. In that case, you have to either mark all those messages as unread or completely redesign the messenger."
] |
ELI5: Why are internet entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos of Amazon or Evan Spiegel so much richer than major real estate developers? | [
"One of the key things to remember is to exclude this bias for \"internet entrepreneurs\" and think of the businesses behind it.\n\nBezos (Amazon) operates a world wide insanely effective and complicated logistics company, perhaps the best in the world! They get tons of stuff from A to B, everywhere in the world, easy, cheaply, and fastly. Thats what Amazon is, its a logistics company. This has incredible value. Many consumers get confused about Amazon, they say \"oh i buy stuff there, oh i watch amazon video or have a tablet by them\". These companies have existed forever, there have been catalog companies and tech an entertainment companies. Amazon is none of those, its all just to support and use their incredible logistics business.\n\nSnapchat is an ad platform. Just like say running an ad on the walking dead or billboard on the side of the road or during hot Beatz 106.3 FM's top 40 morning drive show. It's just a method to advertise products. Advertising is big businesses.",
"There are lots of fabulously wealthy developers, including many billionaires, but you haven't heard about them because real estate is boring and very localized. Often the owners will operate at arm's length; lots of people don't even know who owns their apartment building or their office, much less the skyscrapers you see downtown. \n\nMost of the richest developers are in Asian countries or India, so it's even less likely you would have heard of them. Lee Shau Kee (who I'll admit I had to look up) is worth way way more than Evan Spiegel, for example.",
"Real Estate is a joke. You either start with cash or you get lucky on your bets to make money. You build a brand and scale it. Technology like Amazon is not a joke. It is a marker creating engine for economic growth with a diverse set of solutions.\n\nThink of commercial real estate. It grew like crazy last two decades but it was built on a house of cards called department stores. Amazon is showing how to provide products without brick and mortar.\n\nCompletely dissimilar markets and not comparable in value."
] |
How do laser guided missiles work? | [
"The laser illuminates the target with a frequency of light not typically abundant in ambient light. The missile has sensors to detect this frequency and thus can look for the bright spot, adjusting its fins to aim for it.",
"The missile has a camera in the front and a computer inside. The computers instruction is: Land on the red dot.\nOn the ground or from an airplane, someone makes the red dot with a laser. (Edit: The dot is not actually red though. It's invisible to human eyes but visible to the missiles camera.)"
] |
How does lost money affect our economy? | [
"The power of the dollar will increase, in what is essentially deflation. The quantity of goods and services produced hasn't changed, but the number of dollars circulating to purchase those goods and services has decreased. This means that each dollar will get you a greater quantity of goods and services.\n\nWhile deflation seems good from an individual's standpoint, from the perspective of the overall market it is usually considered bad because it encourages people to hold on to their money rather than spend it. Thus, the government is likely to take corrective action to restore the money supply."
] |
how does scraping scissors/blade along a ribbon make it curl? | [
"When you run a blade along a ribbon, you are using force to stretch the polymers beyond their elastic limit causing permanent deformation. (Think of pulling a spring too far, and it doesn't go back to it's original state.) This causes one side of the ribbon to be longer than the other. The shorter side appears to be \"contracted\" while the longer side appears to be \"expanded\" this causes a spiral, which is the curl."
] |
What does it mean when someone "jailbreaks" a phone? | [
"Jailbreaking is just gaining \"root\" access to the phone, giving you control over ALL files.\n\nOnce you have that, you can do a bunch of things. You can remove programs like the Blockbuster app, or you can go further by replacing the entire interface with another one, like CyanogenMod or whatever you happen to like.\n\nIt is not illegal (Apple tried to claim it was, and the courts ruled against them). Your phone provider won't touch your phone if it's jailbroken, because they have no idea what you've done to screw up your phone. But you can flash your phone back to its original state if you ever need to have it serviced, and they are unlikely to know (unless you totally kill it and don't have access to re-flash it).\n\nJailbreaking is popular, because people like to have control over their stuff and not be forced to take up limited storage for apps like Blockbuster, or they want Ice Cream Sandwich for their phone and their provider isn't going to give it to them, or they want to be able to provide a wireless hotspot without paying an outrageous $30/month, or whatever.",
"Apple iOS = jailbreak\nGoogle Android = rooting\n\nDepending on which OS you are asking about the answer is different."
] |
how is music and movies digitally remastered? | [
"Older movies (pre-2002) were almost all on 35mm. 35mm when scanned has a max resolution around that of 4K. Plus, they also use Photoshop like programs to correct scratches and other imperfections, as well as the color, they might remaster the audio as well. \n \n[Here is how they did it with Jaws.](_URL_0_)",
"The original film master may be re-scanned using a higher quality scanner than was available previously. The audio may be encoded in a higher quality format than was available previously."
] |
Why Ecuador gave Snowden travel pass and now says it was a mistake? | [
"Most likely because the US government is putting pressure on them in the terms of trade restrictions"
] |
How long after birth do eyeballs grow, if at all? | [
"> The vertical measure, generally less than the horizontal distance, is about 24 mm among adults, at birth about 16–17 millimeters (about 0.65 inch). The eyeball grows rapidly, increasing to 22.5–23 mm (approx. 0.89 in) by three years of age. By age 13, the eye attains its full size. The typical adult eye has an anterior to posterior diameter of 24 millimeters, a volume of six cubic centimeters (0.4 cu. in.),[3] and a mass of 7.5 grams (weight of 0.25 oz.).\n\nQuoted off of Wikipedia: _URL_0_\n\n \ntl;dr: Our eyes are generally 16-17 mm at birth, rapidly grow to about 22.5-23mm by age 3, and finish growing at about 24mm at age 13.",
"I'm not sure if it's true or not but I was told growing up that babies eyes seem so large because they never grow. \n\nI've never really cared enough to learn otherwise."
] |
Why did silent films exist? Don't microphones pre-date the video camera? | [
"Films were recorded on - you guessed it - *film*, which predates modern microphones. While the technology to record and replay sounds did predate film, you weren't able to record them from multiple sources and on editable media. The most you could do was record music and play it on a record player along with the film."
] |
How do painkillers know which part of my body is in pain? | [
"They don't - they inhibit pain receptors everywhere. You only feel the pain relief in places where the pain receptors were firing, i.e. places that had pain.",
"Painkillers come in several varieties. These have very specific methods of functioning. \n\nFirst, we have things like Advil, typically known as Ibuprofen in medicine. This type of painkiller works by stopping a long chain of reactions in the body that end with a protein that is associated with pain and inflammation. This protein is everywhere in the body, no matter where the protein is, there will be less of it. This reduction in protein reduces inflammation and pain levels.\n\nSecond, we have drugs like morphine, also known as opioids. These drugs work by blocking signals sent from different parts of the body that indicate pain. So while your leg is screaming to your brain that it is broken, the signal never gets to where it's supposed to go.\n\nThird, there is Tylenol, also known as acetaminophen. This drug has similar effects to Advil, but the current mechanism of action is in debate. So whenever you take Tylenol no one really knows what's going on =).",
"Another thing to look at is the ingredients. You'll notice ingredients for some body part specific pain meds are the exact same as general pain meds. Don't over pay for something, just because it says back and body, or migraine meds vs general pain meds."
] |
Why do video games rely on mega high resolution textures to appear more realistic, when a DVD movie can look far more realistic with a resolution of only 720x480? | [
"**Professional video game environment artist here**\n\n1.) Movies are recorded from a fixed camera angle for each shot. This means that 4000 pixels on screen are always 4000 pixels, regardless of how many objects you have in a shot or how close up you get to them.\n\n2.) Video games are interactive 3d worlds that you can move 'through'. This means game designers need to find a way to make every object that you can conceivably get up close to, from the gun in your hand all the way to the tree on top of that far off mountain, look good up close. To exacerbate things further, the objects are 3d, which means that every surface needs to be covered with pixels even if you can't currently see it, because you 'might'. \n\n*There are things that can be done to help this, like 'streaming' textures in and out of 'memory' when you don't see them, but as a general rule, unless there's a load screen, everything you can see in the world that you can reach must have an ultra HD texture in case you get right up close to it. \n\n**Second edit: A lot of ppl have been asking about how I got into the industry or got this particular job, and even suggested I do an ama so I think that's what I'll do. That said, I'll give a brief summary here: \n1. To be a game artist or 3d artist in general it helps 'a lot' to have a background in traditional art (drawing and painting mostly) I got a 4 year degree in Illustration myself, but at least some training in the fundamentals is needed.\n\n2. Then you'll want to learn the tools and techniques specific to content creation for current games. This would include a suite of digital sculpting, modeling, and texturing tools, as well as a game 'engine' to bring all your content together. ZBrush, 3dsMax or Maya, Photoshop, and Substance Suite are the current standard, and either Unreal or Unity for your engine. I took a post grad in game art which can be helpful for those who learn better from a guided structure, but not mandatory as YouTube is full of good educational content, and there are numerous excellent online forums and programs taught by pros to choose from (Art Station is a must).\n\n3. Work work work on your portfolio. Look at the pros and see where the bar's set, then aim for that. Don't work in a bubble! Developing a critical eye for your own work is key, but in order to do that you need feedback from those with a keener eye than you, so post you work online and ask for critiques. The importance of this can't be over stated.\n\n4. Apply EVERYWHERE at first (Only for entry level jobs of course). We all have our dream companies and games, but we all gotta start somewhere, so don't be afraid to aim high but don't be too proud to aim low either. Getting your first job and getting your foot in the door is far more important, as it means you will be getting paid to gain valuable experience in the field. Think of it as the first step of your new career that will inevitably wind you up at Naughty Dog or Sony!\n\nOk, that's it for now. Hope that satisfies!**",
"because texture in a game are applied to surfaces that can be viewed from as close by as the player wants. \n\nIf you have a rock with a 64x64 texture, that looks great if the player is far away enough to make the rock only take up 48x48 pixels on screen.\n\nBut if the player walks up to said rock and looks closely at it, that rock might be filling the entire screen.\n\nThen a 1920x1080 screen is being filled by a 64x64 texture.\nThat doesn't look very good.\n\n\nSo to conclude - it's because in a game the player has the freedom to look around and zoom in.\n\nEdit:\n**Professional video game programmer here** ;)",
"Because real life is rendered in infinity x infinity, and then downscaled to 720x480. It's the same reason that supersampling on the ps4 pro typically looks better than just rendering in 1080p.\n\n(For those that don't know, supersampling renders a scene in 4K and then downscales for a 1080p display. Results in a much better image and better draw distance than just rendering in 1080p)",
"Since DVDs are either recorded or animated in advance, that can have more realistic shading and lighting, which even the top games and PC's still can't do.",
"You are correlating two different things. Textures are not high in resolution for a realistic effect, though that helps. Cartoon games can also have high rez textures. Games try to please users with crisp and detailed worlds and characters so this means that textures need to be filled with these details.\n\nA movie is realistic because of the art direction to put it this way. Look at the Hobbit movies. People say the CG is bad. It's actually not, however it's the cartoon art direction that is misleading them. The color palette and overall bloom makes everything look for kids and slightly off. The Lord of the Rings is gritty and has dark tones and this we usually correlate with realism. \n\nElectronic Arts has some realistic games out of there and it's because of the art direction and not the resolution. It's in the chosen lighting and mood.",
"You're comparing two different things. Texture resolutions can be really high while the actual screen resolution is low, and vice versa.\n\nReal life has extremely \"high resolution\" textures, the video is just a lower resolution.",
"The resolution you're talking about in the case of movie \\(720x480\\) is the final resolution. This is equivalent to your screen resolution if you have your game running full screen.\n\nTextures are the surfaces of in game objects. If you compare this to real world, you can move the camera so close to the wall that you only see cracks in the paint, but you still see those cracks very detailed, the \"real world texture\" has unlimited resolution. In game, when you put a texture on a wall, and then zoom in to the wall you'll reach a point where the texture is zoomed in so much that it covers your whole screen. Lets say your resolution is 100x100 and the texture is also 100x100 pixels, if you keep on zooming in you will reach a point where you only see 10x10 pixels from the wall texture stretched over 100x100 screen. To avoid this the textures are super big so that even if you zoom in real close you wont encounter pixelization.\n\nSo, to sum up:\n\n > Why do video games rely on mega high resolution textures to appear more realistic, when a DVD movie can look far more realistic with a resolution of only 720x480? \n\nThe final resolution of the movie might be limited but the resolution of each surface texture in that movie is infinite. Games try to simulate that. Another reason is that simply increasing texture size is a very easy thing to do, while improving things like lighting and physics is often hard.",
"Let's be clear. \"High resolution textures\" are pictures (to put it simply) games cover in-game objects with to give detail - e.g. a wood texture that you apply to items that are suppose to be wood.\n\nMovies use \"high resolution textures\" too ... namely real life - e.g. a wooden spoon ... looks like wood, duh.\n\nSecondly, when you say DVD has a resolution of 720x480, you are talking about display resolution - i.e. the number of pixels making up the image displayed on your TV.\n\nVideos games can also run at 720x480 and they did back with the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. Blu-rays typically deliver 1920x1080 as do newer consoles like the Playstation 4 (most of the time anyway, sometimes they drop to 1600x900).",
"That's a good question and I think the answer taps into two things: the uncanny valley and how we perceive film.\n\nThe uncanny valley effect is that when we have very simple images meant to represent much more complex ones our brains tend to go along with it. Draw three circles on top of each other, each one a little smaller as you go up, now put a line out of the sides of the middle circle and three dots in the middle of the top one and I can go along with it being a snowman. An artist can draw more detail on it and we can enjoy it even more as a snowman...BUT, if you go super high resolution and try to animate it and make it look EXACTLY like an actual snowman in real life then our brains start to notice the imperfections. It's hard for an artist to replicate the real world perfectly in digital form, especially with things like human faces, which we are highly attuned to. We notice tiny mistakes and it bothers us. The uncanny valley is the notion that on either end of the spectrum (very abstract and simple to perfectly real) we believe, but in the middle our belief sags. One of the better known examples of this is an animated film called The Polar Express, which creeped some people out because they attempted to depict human faces in a realistic way...but it was slightly off. All the mega high resolution in the world isn't going to help, in fact it can make it worse, if the details look wrong on a human face.\n\nBut I think there is another issue at play here and it's a subtle one. We have watched and loved films for decades (almost a century) at low resolution (that is, a resolution well below what our own eyes can perceive in the real world). Film is a series of photographs projected 24 times a second, it is not nearly as precise as our own vision. Our brains have to fill in the gaps. Film is more impressionistic and flowing. Though, I would argue that our eyes and brains have become more accustomed to higher resolution film and video over time, especially in the last 30 years, but it's a gradual process, it hasn't happened all at once. If the resolution of a TV show or movie is too far ahead of what we expect as a culture we tend to think it looks \"fake\" or like news footage. The most common example for this is The Hobbit, where Peter Jackson, the director, shot the film at 48 frames per second and some audience members felt it made the film look not like a film but like actors walking around on a film set. It was too much information and we lost some of that impressionistic quality of film that makes us drop into it and believe we are watching actual images of hobbits running around in an adventure. It's similar to the uncanny valley concept in animation. However, my guess is that the resolution and the frame rate may continue to march forward, it just has to do so over time.\n\nSo, going back to your original question: many video games are pushing the resolution and detail envelope, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. Video games are trying to push past the uncanny valley, to eliminate those tiny mistakes that stop us from believing, and bring us into a shockingly believable world that is simulated, but appears real. When games like Half-Life 2 do this well (for the time), it's considered a breakthrough. When a game like Mass Effect: Andromeda fails at making humans look human, people get VERY upset. I think video games will continue to push in this direction and make mistakes and breakthroughs as they go. There is enormous expertise in that industry and it gets better every year, BUT it's hard to capture the real world in all it's detail in every possible way. We still have simple things like \"clipping\" where objects intersect with each other and one is clipped off and it breaks the illusion and video games are an illusion. We also have tons of pixel art games with very simple graphics and we have games with abstract graphics and everything else. I'd argue that gameplay is the deciding factor in whether a game works or not, and most places along the graphics quality/resolution spectrum can work when it comes to the look, except that spot close-to-perfection-but-not-quite where there will always be an uncanny valley.\n\nNow to finish this long answer, my apologies for the length, but your question has many parts to it (in fact, I've only scratched the surface). You said that a DVD movie at 720x480 can look far more realistic than video games. The biggest advantage that the movie has is that it is shot in the real world, so the way light plays across surfaces, the way human actors move, the way water splashes, etc. is going to be close to real life (assuming good actors and a DP who uses realistic lighting). A person making a film gets to start with gravity, laws of motion and everything else that actually is in the real world and then capture it on exposed film. That's much easier than trying to programmatically recreate it, because being the least little bit off will trigger our human eyes and minds to reject it. \n\nTL;DR: Resolution will continue to march forward for both movies and games, but whether we believe what we are seeing or not is more dependent on the subtleties of the image and how it was created than just on resolution. In fact, going higher resolution or giving the viewer/player more information sometimes makes us believe it less.",
"Video games never relied on mega high resolution to look \"realistic\". The polygon count, texture and lighting quality all together is what is one of the few deciding factors in realism. All resolution does is make the picture sharper and brings out the colors/lightning etc better...just like with movies.",
"The CGI in the last star wars took easily 10 minutes per frame with full raytracing etc at high resolution. \n\n\nImagine playing a game at 0.016FPS.",
"many comments about textures on things... but that is not the same thing as the overall resolution... \n\nplaying super mario bros in 4k wont make it look realistic.\n\nplaying some ultrarealistic game in 1080p wont make it look bad \\(in fact, played on a 22\" screen, you might be hard pressed to notice 4k vs 1080p\\).\n\nResolution does not define realism. Though it can affect pixel density, which is just as true for a movie if you watch it on a large enough screen for those that are of an age to remember older rear projection tv sets.",
"Because resolution is only one part of the picture. I'm assuming you're talking about real life not pre rendered animated movies. Lighting, not having to deal with polys, not having limited facial animation ect makes a massive difference.\n\nCGI is basically the same as a game, expect they take much longer to render a single frame so it can look closer to real life. Where as a game has to render at least 30fps in real time.",
"It's all about rendering. When a movie is finished if it is completely rendered (basically turned into one long scene). This can be done because the viewer cannot change its course. Unlike a video game.\n\nVideo games basically render while you are playing, because the game does now know exactly how or where you will be moving to. It cannot be as rendered as a movie. Think of a game as continually refreshing while you play.",
"Do you really mean texture resolution (such as how many pixels go into the image representing for the side of a house or the hood of a car) or the overall resolution of the screen in a video game (what you could actually compare to the DVD video resolution)?",
"TL;DR: Life is at seemingly infinitely high res for your eyes to take in, and a camera captures that as best as it can. When you move closer, details get clearer. Games texture generally are limited resolutions you constantly zoom in on as you move around, like zooming in on a picture. The closer you get, the harder it is to see precise details. Final output res doesn't matter at that point.\n\nNLE;WR:\n\nMaker of cartoons, I can add some to this. Think of a texture map like this: take a picture of a piece of wood and print it as a wrapping paper. Now, carefully place it on your wooden coffee table so it covers all the sides. Is your coffee table going to look more like wood than before? How about when you get close up or walk around it? You might start to see the colors be a little off. Maybe some camera noise. The lighting of the textures might not match the room color perfectly. All these variables affect how something can look. Also, how good is that photo of your wood? Was it at a low resolution? I bet if you took something really low quality you'd see that pixellation, like when you shrink an image and try to make it bigger.\n\nOne way to do it would be to model a coffee table to get every slight imperfection in the wood, the grain, etc. all to get truly realistic lighting. This would be an epic undertaking. So, artists generally apply textures to them. These are sometimes computer generated approximations, or usually pictures of images, put on top of a 3D model in order for that piece to look like the thing it's supposed to be. Putting a wood texture on a rectangle so it looks like a table. Texture mapping and tiling eats up less memory than trying to generate everything fully realistic, which means better performance in your game. Though performance is always getting better. \n\nTexture mapping works well for a lot of things. Plastics. Concrete. And you can add bump maps so the surface isn't just an image on a flat plane, but with imperfections that allow the game's light to affect it. And lighting plays a huge factor. \n\nBut what about things like grass? You can kind of tell when you're walking on a picture of grass in a game vs thousands of generated little tufts that interact with the wind, your bullets, your feet, etc. And the closer you get to looking at that texture, it's like zooming into a picture on your computer. Zoom in really close on your windows background. Can you see thousands of blades of grass? Or just a bunch of odd pixels? Compare that to you running in a field toward some grass, then going to the ground and staring at the grass. You can start to see the details in each blade. Those won't be present in games generally. \n\nThat's what your game character is going through. In real life, or with a camera, we're not zooming in digitally like that. We're moving ourselves or the camera closer, so we're better at seeing those blades of grass as they are in real life.\n\nSo it's not the overall resolution of the final image output, but the resolution of the images within images that help make a game feel more realistic.",
"There's something that hasn't really been mentioned here. The other comments are correct, especially the ones about lighting and shading, but there is a good but outdated article that talks more about film vs game resolution:\n\n_URL_0_\n\nThe gist of it is this - objects in film get blurrier at low resolution, whereas objects in games get more jagged and pixellated at low resolution. Maybe games might look more realistic with less resolution if they spent some processing power on a blur filter instead of on extra pixels.\n\nThis makes sense, since objects in real life are infinite resolution represented on a screen in limited pixels, so they get sharper as you get closer in a natural way. Objects in games have a fixed limited resolution that your display has to stretch to fill so it gets more jagged as you get closer in an unnatural way. \n\nSo a tree from far away might look equally realistic in game and in film. But up close, a tree in film would have more and more details visible as you come closer, up to a maximum resolution at which point the fine details are still approximately represented in a realistic blur, and your eye fills in the details. In a video game, the limited texture resolution is already depending on your eye to fill in the details from far away, so as you get closer the gaps your eyes filled in become more abundantly clear, and so it looks more and more fake as you can see the pixels more and more clearly.",
"CUZ developers be using pre rendered cgi, textures, to mask their piss poor shovel ware.\n\nLighting and geometry. All you need. But some developers don't know how to construct believable worlds out of these basic concepts.\n\nSee the Wii, and it's low texture but well designed worlds, Maria series one example, but even ports like Call of Duty.\n\nRenders a believable world at playable framerates with only like 128mb texture memory.\n\nModern Switch and it's full capability on such low video memory provide further examples of how a believable world can be constructed with not very powerful or high memory hardware.\n\nBad devs just pre render high res textures and slap em on everything in their game, instead of fiddling with the lighting and modeling to produce a cohesive real time rendered game world.\n\nUp to 8gb now of vram. For what? A 16k resolution pre rendered texture on a sword?\n\nBut the lighting and shades you use are shite so the whole game, 16k textured sword, looks poo.\n\nStill can't even get grass right, or trees. Making your world feel alive, with a living ecosystem. No textures needed, they're only a bonus to good visual design.",
"Video games don't rely on higher resolution *for realism* but simply because it's always nicer to see things in higher resolution, no matter what they are, be it computer animations, drawings, photos or movies. Higher resolution = more fine detail, that's all there is to it.\n\nMovies are recordings of reality while video games are computer generated images. Higher resolution doesn't magically create higher realism. You can scribble something onto paper and scan it at a billion megapixels and it won't look more realistic than a photo scaled down to a tiny 100x100 pixels. There is simply no relationship there.\n\nEdit: If you're talking about CGI animated movies (like Pixar) then the reason is that those are pre-rendered on huge servers over the course of days and much more work and planning goes into them than a video game which has to be rendered by your home computer which isn't nearly as powerful, and has less time to do it. Video games are designed to be responsive while animations are designed to be more realistic and detailed, regardless of resolution.",
"Because things in real life have little detailed protrusions all over the place, which are shadowed by light and give nice detailed looks to everything. All these tiny little protrusions are hard to model in 3d and take a ton of computing resources to keep track of and have move properly on a rendered model. But textures are nearly free to model as far as rendering resources are concerned. So you can add a ton of detail to a texture and it will still be \"light\" to model, so the game will continue to run smoothly. So you add a bunch of detail to the texture to simulate all the shadow and depth of all the little things that make something look detailed.",
"If we were just rendering 3D shapes it would look pretty good. If you compared a rendered view of a smooth metal cube and the real article, it would look pretty good.\n\nThe problem is things like lighting. Lighting is very complex, because light bounces everywhere. This means we can’t split scenes into pieces without being physically inaccurate, because light from one section could bounce to a different one. \n\nTo sort of limit this, games cheat, and make things look real, without actually simulating lighting. This takes calculation and is subtly different from reality.\n\nIn the real world lighting happens for free. No one has to think about it, it just happens. This is why the real world is so real so easily.",
"1. Get the DVD of whatever movie you're talking about that looks realistic\n2. Put it in your computer and open it up in VLC player\n3. Take a screencap of a scene that looks \"far realistic,\" preferably one that has objects or people in the distance.\n4. Open up that screencap and zoom in on those far away objects until they're the same size as the close up ones were.\n5. That will answer your question.\n\nAs an example, [here is a screencap from the Lord of the Rings on Blu\\-ray](_URL_2_). Oooh, how pretty, right?\n\nAnd [here is what that faraway building looks like when you walk up close to it.](_URL_2_)",
"This exactly. As a 3D game artist/gamer it drives me nuts that we are chasing 4k/60fps visuals with slightly clearer imagery at the crazy cost of GPU power when we could be devoting that power to incrediable looking 720p or even 900p visuals with a clean 4k overlay for UI's. I really wonder what a game designed around maxing out a video card at 720p would look like.",
"It's shading and lighting.\n\nWe *know* what real world light looks like and most games don't have it.\n\nHell, probably two of the most realistic looking games (from a \"oh wow I could walk on that grass\" standpoint) are 2011 Skyrim with crazy ENBs and Minecraft with crazy shaders.\n\nBoth demolish computer performance, but even with low res and low poly textures, the lighting makes it look real.",
"High-resolution textures are applied to 3D surfaces, a wall for example.\n\nPlayer walks closer to surface, closer to the wall.\n\nIf they walk close enough, the surface starts to look blocky. Hence why they use higher resolution textures in the first place.\n\nIf the player stayed far enough away from the surface, lower resolution textures could be used.",
"One is realtime, with freedom to create the scene you want to enjoy. The other is a critically crafted linear experience. You dont make different times, you just scrub though it. A good example i guess would be Heavy Rain, manages to look so good because the possibilities are a lot more constrained.",
"...Because movie cameras are capturing real images and video games are creating it with pixels to imitate.\n\n\\*edit\\* \n\nI don't think i'm going to have kids because of how much this hurt my brain."
] |
Why is it that a temperature like 80°F seems really hot at the beginning of the Summer, but cool by the end? | [
"*\"Homeostasis : The ability of the body or a cell to seek and maintain a condition of equilibrium or stability within its internal environment when dealing with external changes\"*\n\n\nIn the summer your body gets used to temperatures 90F+; The way it gets used to these temperatures is that your body tries to keep its core temperature as low as possible by releasing its internal heat - sweating more constantly, making you thirsty to drink more water, etc. In the winter the reverse is true; your body tries to keep all of its internal heat in as much as possible. \n\nSo 80F in the summer is cold because your body is releasing its internal heat making it cooler in an already cool environment (compared to 90 degree weather). 80F in the winter will feel hot because your body is retaining all of its internal heat, therefore making you feel hotter."
] |
If I wake-up, have breakfast, and try to go back to sleep, my body resists by giving me fatigue, slight pain and an increased heart rate. Why does this happen? | [
"Increased heart rate, sudden (little)burst of energy and wakefullness is normal. You just ate and you are starting the digestion process so your stomach needs more blood (Increased heart rate) for the cells to produces acids and do their stuff.\n\nNow fatigue and slight pain? I'm no expert but I don't think it's usual\n\nDiscomfort maybe? If you lay down over a full stomach it can provoke some discomfort due to the pressure on it. I don't see other reason.",
"It's your 'cortisol awakening response' (CAR) which, according to Wikipedia, \"is an increase of about 50% in cortisol levels occurring 20–30 minutes after awakening in the morning in some people. This rise is superimposed upon the late-night rise in cortisol which occurs before awakening.\"\n\nI know that's not really explaining it like you're 5, but it is an explanation! Not sure why you'd be in pain though - cortisol tends to fight pain. Sounds like something you ought to discuss with a doctor.",
"psychological punishment because you think what you're doing is wrong?",
"This is really a question for a doctor.\n\nNo one has mentioned yet that tea has caffeine. Caffeine will absolutely raise your heart rate\n\n*In general*, once you are up for the day, your body sends around things like hormones to keep you up and awake for the rest of the day. Going back to bed after eating breakfast means you are literally working against your body. If you become so tired after eating that you need to go to bed and then experience pain, you really should talk to a medical professional."
] |
Why don't fish freeze when the water above does? | [
"The ice above forms an insulative barrier to keep in the heat from the Earth below and in a bizarre twist the water below the ice is actually slightly above freezing. Some fish, being cold blooded creatures adapt to this situation.",
"Antarctic icefish (Channichthyidae) are a family of fish that are unique because they have no hemoglobin. These fish have glycopeptide and peptide antifreeze compounds which lower the freezing point of their body fluids below the freezing point of seawater. These compounds are made in the liver, secreted into the blood, and distributed to body fluids where they prevent freezing by inhibiting the growth of ice crystals. These fish actually have ice present on their external tissues while their internal tissues (except for the spleen) are ice free. The presence of ice on the spleen suggests that spleen removes ice crystals from the fishes' circulation.\n\nThere are other fish that have these (or nearly identical) antifreeze compounds, not just the Antarctic icefish.\n\n\np.s.\nThe Antarctic icefish looks really cute in my opinion. It reminds me of totodile.",
"An upvote for you sir. I understand why they wouldn't freeze, and thats because the water they are actually in is slightly above freezing temperature, which is why it isn't froze. What I would like to know is how fish can survive just degrees warmer than frozen. I think it has to do with some sort of hibernation state."
] |
Why you need to put cold water/anything cold on a burn. | [
"Your body is a piece of meat that is being cooked and you need to stop it from cooking.",
"Well for one it absorbs the heat from the burn, and then numbs it so it doesn't hurt as much.",
"Just so you know, you shouldn't put \"cold\" anything on a burn. It should be \"cool.\" Cold shocks the skin and makes it worse.",
"I remember being shown a video when I was a kid about hardboiled eggs. The got 3 eggs up to boiling and then took them out. The first, they immediately dropped into ice water. Five minutes later they dropped the second into the cold water. They dunked the 3rd after 10 minutes. \n\nThey cracked the eggs, and even out of the water they kept cooking. The shell held the heat in. \n\nYour skin is kind of like the shell. If you're exposed to high temperatures, you need to stop the burning asap. It will take your body to get rid of the excess heat without something cool to help it."
] |
How do snipers account for wind and gravity on long-range shots? | [
"Lots and lots of practise in differing conditions. Long shots require elevation to compensate for the drop due to gravity, also you need fire at where they will be and not where they are now.",
"Computers. \nSpecifically Ballistic Trajectory Computers.\n\n[Chris Kyle talks about the shot on an interview with Conan](_URL_0_), and how much of that shot was a matter of targeting computers to handle things like gravity and wind effect. Still a great shot, but not a shot that would be possible without modern technology."
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Why Do Some Sites Require Credit Card CCV Numbers, and Others (like Amazon) Do Not? | [
"The CVV2 number isn't *required* to charge the card, but it reduces the risk of fraud. If the transaction is fraudulent, the merchant might end up having to pay fees or fines to their payment processor, so merchants have an incentive to check CVV2s. But if they don't want to and are willing to risk more chargebacks, they can decide not to require it (which is what Amazon's done)."
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How does a torrent ever get seeders if it can't be downloaded when it has 0 seeders? | [
"The person that starts the torrent is the first seeder.",
"You can still finish a Torrent with zero seeders. So long as all the leechers have all the separate pieces of the file, they can Voltron it up and complete the torrent.",
"The first person that uploads the torrent is the first seeder. However, if that person is logged off, and no one has fully downloaded the file, there will be 0 seeders. If there are multiple leechers though, all who have downloaded pieces of the file, it is still possible to get the entire file, thereby creating a new seeder. \n\nTorrents work by breaking up the large file into a bunch of tiny packets. Each packet is downloaded on its own, and it is \"Put together\" again by the torrent program when they are completed. Its like downloading a bunch of pieces of a puzzle. Every program knows what piece goes where, and the ones you download from seeds and from other leeches get put in their respective places.\n\nIf there are many leeches, lets say 100, They each have pieces of the puzzle, but not the complete puzzle. It is possible for a full puzzle to be completed from all of the pieces available from all of the different leeches. \n\nOnce a puzzle is 100% complete, then that person becomes a seed.",
"Someone who was seeding it comes back online and opens their torrent program."
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If 12 years of war has cost us 6 trillion dollars, what have we GAINED financially? Is there a net gain or loss? | [
"I am unable to provide a solid explanation on the 12 year war that you are referring to but, maybe I can provide a typical ELI5 explanation on war and whats the main benefit of it.\n\nWar is considered as a financial injection to a country that is one of the leading ones on the world. Why? Because every contry that achieved economical greateness inevitably faces overproduction. That basically means that the ammount of things a country produces exceeds the needs of its people. Once that happens, the overproduction should seize because keeping it going will result in loss of money. Limiting the production, means less employment, less investments and generaly leads to economic losses. War is one of the best solutions to that problem. War stimulates the need of various goods so basically you are getting rid of the overproduction. Now this is a very simplictic explanation in layman's language. If you research on the matter, things are far more complex. Overall, once a country gets to an economic standstill due to overproduction, war is one of the best alternatives as it plays the role of a stimulant.",
"When a country becomes a democracy the rights of citizens to own property and businesses becomes better protected. This means that more people are able to buy and trade in the global economy than they were before and multinational corporations benefit from this increase in market potential with American companies like Halliburton gaining first dibs.\n\nIt would be like if you wanted to go trade marbles with your neigbor's children but their mom was a dictator and their dad was really nice. Lets say that the mom was so restrictive it made it impossible to play with those kids. If your parents went over to their house and deposed the mom and let you now play with their children, you would have increased access to trade with the children of that house."
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What is actually occurring in the brain during a seizure? | [
"ELI5: As a person with epilepsy since October 23, 2001, and in the interest of keeping within the guidelines of ELI5, I can tell you you won't like the answer. To simply answer your question, the brain is randomly firing off electrical impulses throughout the brain. These impulses are triggering all the different reactions you would associate with those portions of the brain. If it's the part for a certain motor skill or muscle, then that part of the body will freeze or jerk, if it's in the part where the person's memories of scents are stored, they will think they smell something, if it's in the hippocampus then there's a good chance their short -term memory will get affected. So on and so forth.\nNow, the part you might not, and I especially don't, like: They don't really know WHY it happens. Sure, they can associate it with certain things, like \"Oh, you've had physical trauma to the brain and now you have seizures\" or \"Well your family has a history of epilepsy and therefore it's not surprising that you do\" or as in my case \"Well, you're a 9/11 survivor and you went through a great deal of trauma and that caused an imbalance in your brain\". But in the end they don't really know what causes it. All they know is that for some reason, the brain decides to put on its own little light show of electrical impulses and when it does you can go from staring off for a few seconds, to doing the harlem shake on your back while pissing yourself, to actually dying (like my uncle two months ago). Now there are some instances where they can say, there are specific imbalances in a person's makeup that will trigger a seizure, and they can treat these, but for many epileptics, the condition is idiopathic.\nThe even better kicker is, that they're not even sure how some of the medicine they use to treat seizures work, just that they do.\n\nEDIT: I originally posted that I had Epilepsy since 1999, which was the year my son was born and did NOT cause me to have seizures. They began in 2001, a little more than a month after 9/11. Sorry!",
"Doctor here.\n\nAn epileptic seizure refers to when some or all of the brain fires in an excessive and synchronized manner. Usually the brain is nonsynchronous, meaning different parts have different levels of activity depending on what tasks are being performed. In these seizures, however; a portion of the brain begins to fire in a way that all the neurons are going at once and in an excessive manner. This is usually how a seizure begins. In some cases there's an identifiable cause that is creating this excessive neuron firing -- such as a tumor, a previous brain bleed, irregular blood vessels, electrolyte imbalances, etc. However, in a lot of people an exact cause isn't identifiable.\n\nIn focal(aka \"partial) seizures, the patient's synchronized area remains localized to that area. This can manifest in many different ways -- including repetitive motor tics, abnormalities of speech, or even sensory. I've even seen a patient who would have visual hallucinations every time he had a seizure. Patients are conscious during simple partial seizures, and unconcious during complex partial seizures. These can sometimes spread to involve the entire brain, in which case it evolves into a generalized seizure.\n\nGeneralized seizure refer to whole-brain involvement and always involved an altered state of consciousness. They can either originate from a focal seizure, as mentioned, or they can manifest initially as a generalized seizure. Generalized seizures are further split up based on the patterns of involvement. A couple examples would be your generalized tonic-clonic seizure(aka \"Grand mal\" seizure) which is your stereotypical person convulsing on the floor, vs an absence seizure(aka \"Petit mal\" seizure), where you may not be able to tell at all just from looking at a person that they just experienced a generalized seizure. There are several other subtypes.\n\ntl:dr - there are many different types of seizures, but the basic mechanism is that the brain fires in a way that is overly synchronized and excessive.",
"There are many different types of seizures, but to be general:\n\nTo send signals around your brain, neurons send electrical pulses. The circuit is either on or off. At some point, at the onset of the seizure, one of them glitches. It just keeps flipping on and off over and over again. This overwhelms the ones next to it and they start doing it, and the ones next to them, and the ones next to them. Every time one fires, it keeps sending a signal to the next one down the line. \n\nWhat exactly stops a seizure is not entirely known, but the most likely hypothesis is that at some point, the rapid firing makes electromagnetic changes in the brain that make sending signals difficult. The signal weakens and everyone calms down.",
"if I recall correctly from my neuropsychology studies, it is in an overwhelming series of electrical impulses through the corpus collosum (the bundle of fibres that link the two hemispheres of the brain together) which causes the person to lose consciousness with the overwhelming brain activity. severing the corpus collosum in brain surgery can massively reduce the amount of seizures an epileptic suffers from."
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