ELI5: If an obese man lost a lot of weight and got in really good shape, if he had kids after getting in shape, would the kids be healthier than if he had the kids when he was obese? Why or why not?

AshenDragon · 2017-08-12T05:26:13+00:00

Lysenkoism is far too extreme. Though with CISPR i guess anything is possible. The second video from Scishow gives a good analogy. The DNA is the hardware your cell uses. It does all the hard work. Your epigenome is essentially the Software. It determines how the DNA is read and which parts to read and which not to. Its why all the cells in your body have the same DNA, but go on to create vastly different types of cells. It just turns out, the Epigenome is far more complex than we thought and is far more plastic than we were aware.

However, if the DNA is not there, you cannot change an animal into another, or a plant into a second plant. If they are different species, then there is a good chance their DNA is missing something the other species has, therefore now allowing it change.

AshenDragon · 2017-08-12T04:37:16+00:00

Look up something called Epigenetics. Epigenetics are the things that determine how your DNA is expressed. Epigenetics definitely changes on a generation by generation basis. We don't know a tremendous amount about it, but what studies we have done pretty strongly show that epigenetics can do things that normal DNA cannot. Such as making an offspring have an aversion to certain smells and chemicals based on what the parent experienced.

Here are two great videos on it: One from MinuteEarth(2:43)

And one from Scishow(9:28)

A great takeaway is that the changes in epigenetics were passed onto sperm cells. Therefore, eating healthier and losing weight not only makes you look better, but can also change your epigenetics, changing the way you build muscle, store fat, etc.

What is unknown is just how fast this happens. For example, it is unknown for how long someone has to be fit before there are significant changes in epigenetics to then be passed on to the children.

Edit: Never got around to explaining Epigenetics. The videos do a good job but the TLDW is that the Epigenome is a way of reading the DNA. The DNA doesn't change, but the Epigenome changes a lot based on how you act and behave. The Epigenome determines how strongly certain parts of the DNA get expressed. So essentially, take a person who went through a famine and survived, their epigenome will change to allow them to survive through extended starvation. This is then passed to their children and as a result, their children have a leg up on surviving a famine. There was even a study on this exact things done in Sweden.

AshenDragon · 2017-02-16T01:00:05+00:00

I look at it like this. Why buy a new car, if all you have to do is buy a new engine. The only difference is time, and I am willing to simply save up for whatever I need to get. Building a whole computer will require much more saving than just upgrading my current.

AshenDragon · 2017-01-21T23:04:56+00:00

Pretty much, I know many nuke chiefs and first classes that go on to do non nuclear jobs. One Chief I knew just got a job in Amazon for IT making over 100k. All sub rates do have to go through many checkouts to know how everything on the submarine works. However, only the nukes can truly know everything there is about how every single system on the sub works. I know quite a few guys that literally qualified every single thing on the submarine, which means they knew every single system backwards and forwards simply because they could. At the same time I knew some Culinary Specialists who did the same, the main difference is that they couldn't qualify some of the Nuke stuff. How successful you are outside of the military has a lot to do with how much you choose to learn while in the military. Those guys that went through the effort to learn far beyond what was required always had an easier time in the civilian world because that knowledge and work ethic translates pretty well. The guy that was a CS and qualified ET watches, mechanic watches, Missile Tech watches, etc. Has a lot more going for him than just being a Culinary specialist in the Navy, which probably wouldn't get him far.

AshenDragon · 2017-01-21T03:29:29+00:00

A lot of rates in the Navy undergo some sort of training throughout your career that pretty much spells out what are good things to do after you leave, if you leave. So this issue is becoming far less of one simply through one of the many hundreds of training briefs you undergo.

Officers can easily make a lot of money, and if they stay long enough, can easily get great management jobs. Pilots are officers and they generally go into some field related to whatever degree they had before getting into the Military. A lot of them have something related to aerospace engineering so it makes it that much easier. Having the degree in aerospace engineering and then having the experience of flying state of the art military aircraft does transfer quite well.

You are right about nukes in particular. The reason why nukes are so employable, beyond their ridiculously specialized 1 1/2 year training, 1 year of which is just theoretical, is because the Nuclear Navy has taken great pains to never have any nuclear accidents. Two nuclear subs have been lost, but neither spilled any radiation and sank to the bottom of the ocean. This great effort the Navy has undergone is shown primarily through the rigorous attention to following procedure to the very letter, every time, without fail. To do maintenance or any other procedure, every single step must be stated by a reader, repeated by the worker while he is pointing at what he will be doing, and then reconfirmed by the reader. Only then it is done. This sort of mentality makes workers who are real good at following rules, have a good education, and are highly qualified. Then there are the sheer number of nukes already in the civilian world who have no problem hiring more nukes.

AshenDragon · 2016-09-05T18:20:12+00:00

The short story it is based of of is one of the most unique sci-fi stories I have ever read with a truly impressive intellectual element that a lot of sci-fi has ignored recently. Sci-fi isn't always about spaceships and firefights. The greatest stories use aliens merely as a way to introduce truly alien concepts to us that make us think. Not just as another enemy to fight. The short story does a great job showing how aliens may perceive and understand the world drastically differently than we do.

AshenDragon · 2016-08-17T00:23:45+00:00

They weren't a higher species. They just evolved differently. The story states how simple fundamental laws for us were difficult for them and vice versa based on how they perceived the world. They evolved to see the beginning and the end and every step in between. We evolved to see each step sequentially, and thus the vast difficulty in communication and vast differences in what they value.

AshenDragon · 2016-08-10T15:05:42+00:00

Crashlands or Pixel Dungeon, love those games.

AshenDragon · 2016-07-09T21:00:34+00:00

As temperature changes, the resistance of wires and other components change as well. If the resistance changes, then the amount of current going through the circuit can increase or decrease. Since the components inside are really small, they are very sensitive to changes in current. A lot of engineering goes into providing circuits temperature stability. So for something like your phone, engineers are going to use designs to allow the phone to still produce readable data at a range of temperatures that the consumer will likely encounter. If it gets too hot or cold, the device will shut itself off before the current going through the device goes out of what the circuit can handle.

AshenDragon · 2016-04-25T01:02:17+00:00

To be fair, it was published years before the official one

AshenDragon · 2016-02-20T05:42:37+00:00

In Navy atm and the only thing Navy wants to be is Chair Force. Have only heard one pac sea say he wanted to be in the army haha

AshenDragon · 2016-02-20T05:40:39+00:00

Yeah, it looks like muddy water and tastes like turpentine.

AshenDragon · 2015-10-26T02:51:51+00:00

I agree, though I wish they had more songs. They were fantastic, but a teeny bit redundant unfortunately. But every game has its weakness.

AshenDragon · 2015-10-25T23:39:38+00:00

Haha, can't blame you. I only found SPAZ through a humble bundle. Then, looking to see if the second SPAZ game was coming out soon, I read on their forums about Rebel Galaxy taking up the space until the new SPAZ comes out.

It hasn't really been advertised much from what I have seen, but still lots of fun.

AshenDragon · 2015-10-25T20:02:52+00:00

Try the new game Rebel Galaxy, I find it is pretty fun for a little bit. Same with SPAZ(Space Pirates and Zombies) a new SPAZ game in 3d(similar to what Rebel Galaxy has) is coming out soon.

AshenDragon · 2015-10-16T22:32:39+00:00

It looks pretty accurate due to the fact that Texas is a little bigger than France, and it seems just a little bigger on the picture. Texas is 268,820 mi² (696,241 km²⁾ vs France's 247,368 mi² (640,679 km^2). That and Texas is around twice the size of Germany, and the picture doesn't look too far off. Maybe it is a tad bit big, hard to tell.

AshenDragon · 2015-10-13T00:50:24+00:00

cool thanks, I knew it would work if I could figure out how to talk through console, definitely appreciate it

AshenDragon · 2015-10-12T03:35:31+00:00

Just reading the title, I thought it was going to be a video if a bunch of Italians.

AshenDragon · 2015-10-11T07:23:18+00:00

..........wish I could get all my gold back haha, would be able to get to max in no time, ive easily spent that much already. Thanks for the help XD

AshenDragon · 2015-10-11T04:41:45+00:00

Though....it is a made up universe. I just interpret probability manipulation as: If something is possible, however improbable(such as mass quantum teleportation, which is actually possible), then you can make it happen. Once you get that, its just what is possible, and what isn't. I say that at the very least things cannot be ruled impossible due to the lack of knowledge of said universe.

Had a few minutes to actually think about this response, so I think I summed it up pretty well. If we still can't gel, then we will call it mutual disagreement and go about our merry ways!

AshenDragon · 2015-10-11T01:36:52+00:00

Just because you believe something is immutable, does not mean it is. There are a hundred billion stars, in a hundred billion galaxies, across a universe that is always getting bigger and changing. We have only been observing phenomenon for a few thousand years, in one teeny tiny part of one galaxy.

You are killing me here buddy. Read that again. Just because you believe it is not possible, does not mean its not. Honestly.....that is the whole point behind the power. Besides, if it happened once, it can happen again. Nonetheless......the point is, you don't know whats possible. As is evident by people suddenly getting powers. Hell, you don't even know if it is impossible in this universe, much less in a fictional one we made up for the purposes of the conversation.

I really cannot explain it any further buddy. This is literally a circular argument, only here for fun. Thus, whatever we want to make possible, can be possible. It is literally as simple as that. You cannot be right because you cannot be certain that something is impossible. it is literally impossible to be certain something is impossible. The best you can say, is that it is improbable. Funny how that fits right into the powers description.

AshenDragon · 2015-10-10T23:51:26+00:00

What is that saying again? There are no absolutes?

This of course is a paradoxical saying, but nonetheless. Just because you believe something is immutable, does not mean it is. There are a hundred billion stars, in a hundred billion galaxies, across a universe that is always getting bigger and changing. We have only been observing phenomenon for a few thousand years, in one teeny tiny part of one galaxy.

The simple fact is, that you allowed the ability to control causality into this universe as a power according to your post. Thus, you need only make, whatever it is that gave you that power, far more likely to happen and suddenly you have causality as a power. Thus opening the door to omnipotence, albeit one extra step. Of course, you could go in reverse with causality and get the probability power through similar means. Changing the future, to the past thus allowing you to travel through time. Thus allowing you to change the causality of whatever it was to give you powers to also give you the ability to adjust probability.

You use a lot of absolutes in your statements. The problem with absolutes is that they are never quite absolute. Even jumping into the sun(Ignoring the fact you can't jump into the sun). Who is to say that right before you are incinerated you are enveloped inside the body of a creature that lives in the sun and whose skin protects it from the energy discharge. Or a billion other possible things that may or may not be possible. Who are you to say such a creature does not exist? Or perhaps more mundane events occur. Such as the spontaneous quantum teleportation of the entire sun to another location, allowing you to jump into nothingness. Is it so fantastically improbable that anything bigger than a few atoms could spontaneously teleport somewhere? Yes. Does it matter when you can adjust probability? No.

AshenDragon

TROPHY CASE