Recent comments in /f/explainlikeimfive

MikeWise1618 t1_j67w5w6 wrote

Reply to ELI5: How does ChatGPT work? by Zurbinjo

It is a direct decendent of the same techniques used to help you type by predicting the next word on smartphones and chat programs.

People found they could improve those models using trained artificial neural networks to learn prediction patterns. These evolved into very large models that have to train for very long times on humongous amounts of data on a very large number of computers.

Papers on these have been criticized for showing little architectural innovation or cognitive insight., just scaling things up massively.

But the results certainly produce many hitherto obtainable aspects of human intelligent discourse, even it is impossible yet to tell if any cognitive model building is going on in that artificial neural network.

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Chromotron t1_j67u1jp wrote

Reply to comment by Way2Foxy in Eli5: how does stomach acid not exit with feces when we have diarrhoea? Isn't it just a sphincter which should in theory not be infallible? by Thtanilaw1113

Yeah, a lot of people see the terminology and shut down despite it only being place-holders for "the thing I explain to you". Duodenum sounds alien, but replacing it with "that thing right after your stomach" in every sentence gets tedious and unreadable pretty fast.

I fully agree that instead of all those "omg! that is not ELI5!" posts people throw around (some ignorant of the actual meaning, some not), they should just ask for clarifications. I really wish that was a rule, as in, telling people that something is not ELI5 instead of asking for clarification is forbidden. I've only very rarely seen such responses where I would consider it justified.

I had several instances where OP asked for an explanation that technically does break the rules. Something like "As an engineer, I learnt this and that math. But how does [complex mathematical theory] fit into my work?", where the only serious option is to explain based on OP's knowledge, not a layperson's.

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Jaffacakereddit t1_j67th0y wrote

Reply to ELI5: why can't we use electricity to kill microorganisms in small amount of water ? by FreshT3ch

Electricity works on potentials. Horses are particularly sensitive to electric shock because their front and back legs are a good distance apart, the voltage difference is large. They can even die by walking on ground near a broken electrical connection that a human wouldn't detect because of close-together feet. There is a system of electro fishing where current is passed into water to stun fish so they float to the surface to be caught. Counter-intuitively you can stun a large fish with a smaller current than needed to stun small fish. Now imagine the size of a microorganism....

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Chromotron t1_j67taue wrote

Reply to ELI5: How is caesium-137 used in mining operations? by kitsunesan1029

As an example of how that can end see the Goiânia accident. There the same stuff, caesium-137 inside a secured box, was just thrown away in a trash dump. Then someone found the box, wondered what valuables are inside such a closely locked thing, broke it open and... played around with and spread the glowing magic powder to the neighbourhood. A lot of people got severe radiation doses, it needed very serious clean-up, and people died.

> And how is it lost off a truck if it’s so dangerous?

The honest answer is: because people are sometimes idiots and don't follow adequate safety measures. Somebody screwed up. In the above incident, that wouldn't be the guy who found it (you can't expect random people to know about caesum-137 and its use), but whoever carelessly threw it away.

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BurnOutBrighter6 t1_j67suok wrote

Reply to Eli5: if cardio makes the heart stronger by increasing heart rate and blood pressure, why do energy drinks damage it? by CrammedMeat

Besides the other answers, it also has to do with duration.

When you're doing cardio exercise, do you go for 5 hours non-stop with zero breaks? Energy drinks raise your heart rate constantly, for hours. If jogging for several hours straight sounds like "too much exertion to be beneficial and into the realm of possibly also damaging" well that's why elevating your heart rate for a whole day with energy drinks is possibly damaging too.

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Additional-Dark2919 t1_j67sfki wrote

Reply to Eli5 : What does hot air rise and cold fall? And why they higher I get in the atmosphere, the colder it get? by hopitlong21

Hot air rises because its less dense than cold air. The reason so has to do with the kinetic particle theory. As the temperature increases, the average speed of the molecules increases, and thus they collide with more kinetic energy and spread out more. Thus there are less particles per unit volume, decreasing the density.

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