What Anthropology books would you recommend to someone new to the field? I took an intro to Anthropology course last year in college and it was my favorite class I’ve ever taken. I absolutely loved reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Hurari and am currently reading a book called 1491 by Charles man that is really interesting. Any suggestions are appreciated! (Also sorry if this is too far off theme)

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During my first year at university, I studied Sociology amd Anthropology as an outside module. We had to discuss a book within the field out of a list, and I chose Alice Goffman's On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City. I read the whole thing in three days because I enjoyed it that much (and obviously, knowing more about the book would help in my exam).

A lot of the facts have since slipped out of my brain, but I very much remember being enthralled at the time, so I'd highly recommend it.

What are the basics of being able to read and understand Hebrew?

How does standard Economics model the economies of authoritarian nations, like Russia, Iran and China, or nations in war like the Ukraine? Are those models useful?

Sapiens, by historian Yuval Noah Harari, plays pretty fast and loose with the science. The Dawn of Everything by anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow has a similar vibe with better references - they still make a lot of speculations, but they're explicit about when they're doing so.

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You don't have to be an authoritarian nation to have large discretionary expenditure. Take for example the immense US expenditure in the military industrial complex. None of it is subject to market forces, yet macroeconomic modelling still captures it.

Are there truly big mysteries around “missing links” in anthropological genetics? Are there currently anthropologists who seriously study the possibility that something or someone “helped” our genetics along?

In the Sherlock Holmes books numbers are often in the form of e.g. "two-and-twenty" instead of the currently usual form of "twenty-two". To me this change to start with the more significant number makes sense. But what led to this change in numbering and when did it take place? Did it follow a longer debate? Was there a transition period? Could a similar transition happen to other languages like german, where at the moment a "two-and-twenty"-style numbering is in place?

Small Places -- Large Issues by Eriksen is a great intro to the field. For something more specific (and kind of mind blowing) I suggest Stone Age Economics which is about the economics of hunter-gatherers.

Do we now when language started? Was it before or after we migrated out of Africa?

What would happen to a human if they were placed under a giant plunger (the kind you use in a toliet or sink) and plunged? Would the person rip apart?

In what ways is the US stock market different today vs inception, and what are the affects?

Does a language have an "easiest and hardest to learn" counterpart? For example, if someone only speaks and understands English, Japanese or Ethiopian, is there a language considered the easiest and hardest to learn from that starting point?

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Biology and Darwinism :

I came across these 2 terms and i didn't found so much help on Google, can someone elaborate more?

These are the concepts :

• Darwinian hyper-production of potential solutions.

• Post-production culling.

Homo deus (follow up to sapiens), and blueprint were both really cool books as well. Guns, germs, and steel is next on my list. Supposed to be really good.

And a bit different, but the foundation series by Asimov is a more light hearted fun sci fi series with heavy sociology/anthro basis.

Fully depends on what medium they're in and if a part of you is stuck. Generally it wouldn't be ripped apart though, you would be squished when the plunger pushed down.

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Let's say the scenario is this:

1. When fully pushed down, there is still room for a human to stand/sit so no way the person would get squashed.

2. No part is stuck and this is a normal environment/medium (a lab in a building so to speak)

3. What happens to the human body when it's pressed down and when it is pulled up? I know it has to do with negative/positive pressure but unsure what would realistically happen

English and German share a significant percentage of cognates, and going back and forth between those is generally much easier than pairing English with other languages. Same situation between the romance languages.

In terms of linguistic classification, when do two different dialects of the same language diverge into two entirely different languages?

Linguistics: What do scientists think of SRS (spaced repetition software, see link) techniques for vocabulary retention, e.g. ANKI

Also is there an even better way?

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Given a few base assumptions, and using PV=nRT the most likely scenario is minor to major bends, maybe ruptured ear drums and things from rapid pressure drop.

The subject chamber couldn't develop a full vacuum, but a ratio of chamber to plunger volume. The volume would change the temp would drop a little and the pressure would drop a lot. Reverse it and pressure and temp go up. But if the pressure drop was high enough the nitrogen in solution in ylur blood would come out but the pressure rise again wouldn't be enough to make go back in solution.

The bends are painful and starts in places like the joints but can mean death if severe enough.

Which celestial body that we know of would most likely harbor life/be capable of harboring life?

Economics. We claim to be a “free market” economy but don’t question FED setting rates instead of market forces. Why is money different than shoes or bread?

Why do some countries still have strong diglossia patterns and why did some (like chinese) never develope a phonetic skript to replace the old scripture?

Is there a way to know that?

I think, usually the criterion is mutual understandability, but there are exceptions like chinese, where some linguists argue, the dialects should be considered different languages, because people from different provinces can't understand each other, but they are still considered dialects because of the political implications.

Specifically for Social Anthropology, I'd recommend "Watching the English" by Kate Fox - written by a social anthropologist who's the daughter of a social anthropologist talking about social anthropology - admittedly, in the context of the English so in that sense narrow, but covers the concepts of social anthropology very well.

Why haven't economics "solved" the economy? Why do we still have recessions and bubbles? Is it even possible to completely prevent unwanted financial effects? Will there always be winners and losers in the economy?

Interesting, thank you :)

Within the solar system, besides Earth, Mars and Venus.

Outside of the solar system, GLIESE 667CC and KEPLER-22B. There are a fair number of other contenders but we just don't know...yet.

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Your description sounds like the only effect would be first higher then lower than normal pressure. Read on what happens to divers who go down or up too much too fast. It would be the same I guess.

What will happen now that they are busy with quantitative tightening?

At what age would a baby become distressed by viewing a gruesome video/picture e.g. narcos murders, degloving, etc.

One of the reasons is you can't do controlled experiments in macroeconomics. Can't start with 3 identical countries and try them with higher, normal and lower interbank rates, while making sure everything else is the same.

The old saw is that a language is a dialect with an army. Basically, there's a lot of overlap between the two, and the difference isn't so much technical as it is political/social.

You should provide the context where you found them if you can, I or someone else might be able to help out more in that case.

"Darwinism" and "Darwinian" aren't really something I would think of as technical terms but are usually used to refer to some form of evolution involving natural selection....so if I were to hazard a guess, I would say that probably what they are talking about is something like a genetic algorithm, so maybe searching for information on that will help.

Earth, heh.

Aside from that, in the solar system I'd put the best odds on subsurface oceans in some of the outer moons or deep in the crust on Mars.

No, bit in fringe cases it is still considered "missing link".

Mainstream idea is simply time and interbreeding. Geneticists can trace neanderthal DNA in modern humans which helped strengthen the claim that there never was a missing link at all. It was all compatibility and time like any other animal on the planet.

There are those who make the claim that we where "helped" but they usually have everything they are tied to their viewpoint, much like flat-earthers. Ignoring any proof that doesn't support their theory no matter how well tested and explained.

Thank you for the reply, appreciate your insight!

Is there a word for a visual reminder?

Not a visual mnemonic so much as something that makes you remember some specific process or task?

I'm thinking along the lines of visual landmarks to remember when to turn when driving - turn left after the gas station with a giant tree.

Or leaving something out of place in a conspicuous area to remind yourself that something needs to be done.

Essentially, the word for a visual "make you think about something relevant".

There are “dialects” in mainland China that aren’t just different languages, they belong to completely different language families.

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Yes, second language learning difficulty is measured relative to the first language.

The US DLI and state department difficulty rankings are based on the number of hours for an English speaker to learn the target language; it's different for speakers of other languages. For instance Korean speakers have little trouble with Japanese, despite these being category IV (hardest) on the DLI scale.

Factors that make languages easy or hard are vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing system, and cultural cues (and a few others that I can't recall at the moment). Category IV languages have differences from English in all of these categories.

Also them criticizing sapiens is rly fun to read tbh (and pretty true lol)

Did the earliest languages have pronouns?

We would call that a "cue" in psychology, although that term is not specific to the visual domain.

What is the best / most widely accepted / simplest model of political orientation? The left/right dimension is well known, and popular online systems like political compass add an authoritarian/libertarian dimension to make a 2D model.

What does the academic literature say? Specific references sought, preferably.

Can you explain to me what NAKED SHORTING is?

Can you explain to me why ancient "Egyptians" have Caucasian DNA?

Can you explain to me why China has multiple PYRAMIDS throughout the countryside(that have been hidden by the CCP) and why they have Caucasian mummies inside of them?

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Economics question on the current levels of inflation around the world: Milton Friedman once gave this response to the cause of inflation, stating it primarily caused by governments printing money via central banks.

> "Consumers don't produce it, producers don't produce it, the trade unions don't produce it, foreign sheikhs don't produce it, oil imports don't produce it. What produces it is too much government spending and too much government creation of money, and nothing else."

This makes sense to me as printing money dilutes the value of currency, making everything more expensive across the board rather than one specific sector.

Covid caused massive turmoil in March 2020 where indexes dipped more than in 2008, but it only lasted 1.5 months opposed to 2 years because this time governments started printing money to support markets, buying up bonds and other assets.

If you look at the balance sheets of these central banks it shows that they all printed hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars just after March 2020, presumably to keep the markets afloat. Those balance sheets now show a strong correlation with current global inflation levels, just skewed a year or so.

So is that it? Is the main cause of all this inflation just the knock on effect of governments spending their way out of a crash during covid? And if so, it's my understanding that the only way to truly reduce that inflation is to remove the printed money back out via a "market correction" period, aka a crash. Is that right? Insight from experts in the field would be welcome.

Neither “dialect” nor “language” are strictly defined concepts in linguistics. The classical criterion of recognizing dialects is mutual intelligibility (the varieties are clearly different but people can understand each other), but it’s not entirely unproblematic. “Language” is usually recognized on the basis of some political, cultural or historical significance.

The current approach in linguistics is to leave these things somewhat ambiguous and just note different varieties and their relationship between each other (approach that glottolog takes). Some have been advocating for “doculects” - identifying a variety on the basis of the publication or data that describes it. In the end, one can come up with multiple different measures for what’s a dialect and what’s a language, many of them useful in own way. ,

Learning Hebrew ;)

I was lucky to have had an opportunity to study Old Testament Hebrew in school. It was in part what got me interested in theoretical linguistics.

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Quite possible. Deictic reference (words that refer to people or places related to some universal viewpoint, usually the speaker) is central, very commonly used function of the human language. It would make sense that the language started with the desire to express these kind of relations.

Of course, there is no way to prove it as we have no way of knowing what the earliest languages looked like. I’m sure however it had a word that sounded something like “ma” or “pa” and referred to a close person or group of people.

Has anyone constructed an "anatomy of learning", linking all of the pedagogy paychology and neuroscience into a coherent structure?

The market does set the (long-run) price for money.

The price of money is the real interest rate which is the nominal interest rate (managed by the fed) minus inflation (determined by the market). If the fed tried to perpetually lower the nominal rate, this will lead to higher inflation (assuming nothing else is changing) as the market restores the "natural" real interest rate.

The reason we do this is because highly variable inflation in very costly. For example, it makes it risky to lend money (as you don't know if the money will be worth much less when you get paid back due to a large bout of inflation) which makes it costly for businesses to raise capital and depresses the economy.

By manipulating the nominal rate so that it "absorbs" all the market fluctuations in demand for money (which cause variation in the real rate), the fed is able to maintain a low, stable inflation level and eliminate this problem. This is why you will sometimes hear about the fed's "inflation target" and why we find it optimal to have an entity managing the money supply.

They've had pretty easy contact with other countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. In later eras, they developed along with Ancient Greeks and Romans, so there were plenty interaction between the cultures.

The Ptolemy line, from which Cleopatra VII (the famous Cleopatra) descended, had partial Greek ancestry.

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The books weren't originally books, but were stories printed in Strand magazine and dramatically increased the sales of the magazine as a result. These stories were published in different years under broad categories such as The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes or The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, so the "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" was published as The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (the second series of these) and it was the 8th adventure in that series or 2 8.

Seconding this!

difference is political/social/cultural rather than linguistic....

(you try tell Serbian ppl they're speaking a dialect of Croatian, or a Hindi person theyre speaking a dialect of Urdu... stabbed ... ask them if they understand the other, tho, they'll say of course, it's the same language you moron... stabbed)

(linguists have never agreed on any linguistic criteria that would define the difference)

TL;DR you're getting stabbed

I've heard Ideal Anarchism referred to as a "Stateless, Classless, Moneyless, society"

Now, studiously trying to avoid a political debate, what does the "Moneyless" part of that entail? While money can of course be used in a corrupt manner, it is at base, as far as I understand, an abstraction of the value of human labor used to make exchanges of good and services easier and more efficient.

By calling for an abolition of money, it seems like they'd be calling for an abolition of such exchanges. Which even if all primary needs are met by communal contribution, seems like it would needlessly limit long-range trade and a whole host of interpersonal interactions.

Have I misunderstood or misrepresented something? Because while I can kind of grok what a stateless and classless society would look like, and why some might advocate for it, a moneyless one just seems like it would be going back to the barter system for no particular reason.

Alexander the great conquered Egypt as part of the Persian empire resulting in the founding of the city of Alexandria so there were a great many Greeks in Egypt.

Interestingly, these pairs do not always reciprocate understanding.

Italians have some trouble learning Romanians, however Romanians find it much easier to learn Italian.

Am I right to assume that we don’t ACTUALLY know what ancient Egyptian music sounded like? The common melodic motif in pop culture that is associated with Egypt has nothing to do with it, and was just made up? If I’m right, where did this motif come from? If I’m wrong, how do we know it actually comes from (ancient) Egypt?

These are really burial mounds, tombs or mausoleums rather than true pyramids, terming them pyramids have led some people to make unfounded claims about their origin and inhabitants.

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Astronomy: the JWST photos of distant galaxies has people telling us these galaxies are from 200 million years after the Big Bang.

How do we measure the age of the light/galaxies? We can’t be using triangulation. I’m assuming red shift, but I’d like to know more about how this is figured out, and what is the margin of error in the calculation.

Philip Cohen the sociologist, who is generally pretty pro-poor, eviscerated that book on his blog. Her findings are implausible and her methods suck. (And she has BO and her mom is fat.)

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Probably as soon as it a) could see and b) realized what was happening.

The one that goes, “There’s a place called France where the naked ladies dance”? It was made up for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

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It's just like learning any other language. It's got grammar, vocabulary, and a writing system. What kind of answer are you looking for?

why the currency crisis doesn't necessarily lead to the government's collapse? (Venezuela/Iran)

Thank you all for the suggestions, I’ll have to check them out!

That makes sense. Do you think that economics will ever be "solved"? Like with computer simulations or something?

Thank you so much!

So there is no more specific word? That is a little frustrating.

I am going to coin a few words that will make linguists cry as it will separate bits of the Greek but still have relevance:

Viewmonic: A visual reference to remember something important, specifically a visual clue to remind oneself of something that needs to be accomplished.

1: A specific landmark that is followed in directions. (e.g., :"After the large tree on the corner, take the third right".)

2: An item placed in an odd location as a reminder to do something specific. (e.g., "The large red bow wrapped around the door handle reminded them to get their lunch before leaving for work".)

Cuemonic: As above.

Are we really carnivores, herbivores or both?

Good question!

First off, there never was a barter system in any significant way (ie, "I've got one goat and you've got some clogs and we exchange them"). Rather, the assumption that there always must have been a sort of market exchange of goods is modern society projecting its own beliefs onto the past.

In the example above, most tribal societies wouldn't see it as you owning a goat and me owning some clogs. Instead, they would like see us as having (or having access to) a goat and some clogs. If the tribe had things available to it, members of the tribe wouldn't be excluded from them. Concepts like private property, individual ownership and the pursuit of maximizing individual wealth as we know them today are much, much more recent.

One thing to note about most ideas of Anarchist society is that it's very communal (which may seem counterintuitive to people who think anarchy = chaos). The idea is that people work for the benefit of all (which includes themselves) rather than for themselves (which may exclude others).

You're right that such a system would likely gain some efficiency by quantifying labor or goods and services, but that doesn't require money. The key tenet of money that you're missing is that some individual or group owns that abstraction of value (and others do not own it). In a well-functioning anarchist society, the idea is that you wouldn't pay for food or housing or healthcare, for example; rather, these things would be available to you because the members of the society work to provide them to all according to their need.

Obviously there are lots of complexities and uncertainties that such a society would need to navigate, but the main thrust is that if we abolish private property, there is no longer a role for money to play.

Is Economics a science?

Economics has no good of its own. It's just a series of ideas.

Is Donald Trump a serial insurrectionist?

667CC is a lot closer than 22B.. still hard to fathom that kind of distance though. What are your thoughts on other-than-carbon-based lifeforms?

I've always entertained the thought of small-celled organisms within the under oceans of Europa. I think that's the right one? Something about the friction of an elongated orbit generating enough heat to keep the salty 'ocean' liquid under the surface..

Harvesting fresh water from the ocean or in dry areas - My question is does harvesting water from the desert air not make the area more dry?

When it comes to using de-salination plants would the water that is being put back in the ocean hurt marine life/plants?

If trans-Neptunian objects are too dim to see with most telescopes, why is it not an option to just... light them up? Wouldn't a powerful laser from Earth be able to illuminate a small corner of the sky for observation?

Oldest known language is Sumerian and that was more than 5000 years ago.

Prior to that I would say it's not possible to know since it was probably never written down.

I heard it's similar in biology with race, population, species etc. and medicine with diseases and syndromes...

Science is just labeling Rorschach blots.

> To me this change to start with the more significant number makes sense. But what led to this change in numbering and when did it take place? Did it follow a longer debate? Was there a transition period?

You could argue we're in a stalled transition period. The teens have not been switched - it "should" be teenthir instead of thirteen etc.

>Could a similar transition happen to other languages like german, where at the moment a "two-and-twenty"-style numbering is in place?

I don't see why not, in principle. Some German books even recommended that in the early days of adoption of the Arabic numerals (which are the reason for the confusion - they go in the opposite direction of original Germanic pronunciation of numbers). Martin Luther wasn't a fan though, and that was probably the deciding factor. It's unlikely anyone will decide to switch it around anytime soon, but not impossible.

As far as I know, the demarcation problem has not been solved which makes answering this question "correctly" impossible.

That being said, (modern) economics is typically referred to as as "social science" and operates how I expect most people expect a science to operate. Namely, formulating hypotheses and models, testing them using data, and throwing out the theories that turn out to be wrong.

The process is, of course, much messier than a physical science like chemistry or physics for many reasons. The largest is that it is unfeasible and/or unethical to run many controlled experiments that one might want to run.

There are political/cultural/history questions - in both cases it depends very much on the specific context.

> > > > > The Ptolemy line, from which Cleopatra VII (the famous Cleopatra) descended, had partial Greek ancestry.

I mean they originally were fully Greek, and they did their level best to stay that way through most of their dynastic period. Even when they adopted the local custom of sibling marriage, that would only have reduced the influx of local non-Greek heritage.

Why is helium so effing cool?

> Obviously there are lots of complexities and uncertainties that such a society would need to navigate, but the main thrust is that if we abolish private property, there is no longer a role for money to play.

I'm still having a bit of trouble with this, and rather than trying to put it into words, I think an example would be more useful.

Say you have Bob. Bob wants a cake for a celebration. He could make it himself, but he's not that great at it and it might not turn out so hot. However, he knows Dave bakes great cakes, the best you can get in the local area. Now they're not exactly friends, so Dave probably won't take the time to bake the cake just because Bob asks (if it was life or death, that's another matter, but ultimately it's just a cake). But! Bob is a great artist, and he knows Dave wants a painting of his family. An offer is made and agreed to, Bob gets a cake, and Dave gets a painting.

Now, this type of exchange seems like one where just having some money as an abstraction of labor that could be stored and transferred at will would be useful, rather than having to perform all labor as it comes.

So I guess, how would this transaction go down in an Anarchist society? Would this type of transaction take place in an Anarchist society? Does Bob ever get good cake and does Dave ever get a nice painting? Is it just assumed that, in an anarchist society, every Bob and Dave are good enough friends to do this type of non-critical "luxury" labor just as part of the friendship? Are the communities just small enough so that Bob's celebrations are Dave's celebrations and vice versa?

Also, any recommended reading/places where I could badger with lots of questions, because my mental wheels keep spinning off into unknown unknowns as I try to figure out what such a society would look like and how/if it would be able to supply services like modern medicine, or the internet, or widescale publication of literature, etc etc etc

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How is inflation determined by the market? You're not implying that inflation is caused by the market correct?

I also don't believe that fed does an efficient job at "absorbing" inflation as seen currently with record high inflation. They respond way too slow. There is also something to be said about the Fed manipulating the nominal rate so much that is causes price distortions in the economy as seen in 01' and 08'. Many have argued that the record low nominal rates have caused bigger booms and bigger busts as it causes speculation in the markets. Why would you put money in a "savings" account when you can only make .1%? Does lower interest rates in your opinion not spur speculation and greed since you cannot find a good return in any savings account with low nominal rates?

Why have the Biden administration, DOJ, and even the mainstream media, almost totally ignored (even denying it at times) the huge border crisis of illegal immigration? It is, and has been, a humanitarian disaster of truly epic proportions, and it is unconscionable that it is being allowed, and even encouraged!

PBS Eons has a video that discusses fossil evidence for the anatomy required to make human speech. Essentially, about 3 million years ago.

[When We First Talked] (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eCW0zyDGuXc)

I think someone before said to me it doesn't have vowels. Also, each letter represents a word? I was hoping there would be an answer that would elaborate on and/or confirm any of this.

With econ / poli-sci

How much influence does the American president actually have over gas prices? It always seemed weird to me that people blame potus.

Is there any proof either in the US or otherwise that shows “trickle down economics”, is effective?

The spoken form has vowels. The written form has them in the form of dots and lines that go around the letters (which represent consonant sounds, not whole words), but they're usually omitted other than in kids books.

For example, the word for friend is "חָבֵר" (chaver), but you'd usually see it as "חבר". It's written right to left, so if you look at the first letter, the ח is the "ch" sound and the Tetris-piece-looking thing below it is the "a". These are called "dots".

In practice, you get used to it pretty easily as a reader. Instead of "chaver", it's "chvr", but reading it still becomes second nature.

Consider that English only has 5-6 written vowels (depending on if you count "y"), but 14-15 different vowel sounds in American English. So, how do you know if an "o" is the sound in "owl" or the one in "owe" or the one in "on"? You just learn it when you learn to read. Same thing with Hebrew vowels.

There are some letters that seem vowel-y (like א, which is roughly like an "ah" sound), for historical reasons. What they actually are are consonants whose pronunciation is either subtle or silent (depending on the letter, and one's accent/pronunciation) and which are almost always associated with a particular vowel sound.

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Both, quite obviously. For context, look at the shape of our teeth and the subsequent food types said shapes excel at masticating.

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What are some good reputable sources and/or online courses? I could take to get an education on the basics of economics? Would be great if the resource could’ve also cover more advanced topics. I’m mostly interested in self learning, and to hopefully get a better understanding of our economy, and how the market reacts to various types of news

Wow, didn’t know that. What’s its connection to Egypt?

>Ask Anything Wednesday

Could a reanimated sentient hand be fully mobile with just the muscles and ligaments in and below the wrist or would it require more of the arm present? How much more?

The hand appears to have adequate blood supply and central nervous system, so these factors can be ignored for the sake of the question.

Political science/recent U.S. history: What books or other resources are good for learning about the evolution of US policies that arose in response to 9/11, in particular the PATRIOT Act and the drone program, in an objective and comprehensive way? Obviously any academic or journalist will have their own perspective and that’s fine, but I want to avoid resources that are primarily partisan or activist in nature. I am particularly interested in how they changed in response to different presidential administrations.

Much like how European settlers brought disease to the natives, will future space explorers be decimated by any planets that we find life on?

You don't solve it, you can only manage it. Same reason it's called as Dismal Science. As long as we don't solve first the mystery of human brain, or we don't act like robots behaving in certain ways there will never be a perfect economy. Also, the economy is much more complex than having winners/losers. There's such thing as win-win situations such as renewable energy or lose-lose situations like natural disasters. Only Technology can "solve" or compromise with our economic problems.

I did some research a while ago with translation out of English into three different languages: Spanish, Arabic, and Japanese. We had groups of translators translate the same six texts into their languages, and then we also translated the six texts with groups of machine translation systems for each language pair. We found that the groups of translators tended to translate something into their language from English in increasingly diverse ways the more “distant” a language got from English (Spanish being closest, then Arabic, and then Japanese being the most “distant”), meaning, for example, let’s say 6 out of 20 Spanish translators translated a word differently into Spanish, but then 10 out of 20 Arabic translators translated the same word differently, and maybe 14 out of 20 Japanese translators translated the same word differently (things were obviously more messy than this but there were clear statistical patterns).

The crazy thing is that the groups of machine translation systems followed the same pattern. Those machine translation systems (neural networks) were trained on tons of existing translations and show evidence of a pattern in translator behavior on a very large scale. It was hard to compare our results with existing research (linguistic “distance” is a slippery concept that I really only saw addressed in one large-scale study; I’ll try to find this study later tomorrow to put on here), but I feel like our work was an empirical estimate or indication of the relative distance of several languages from one language (not from each other but just from that one other language, in this case English).

Cause it will run out and there is no way to produce more, unless long periods of time are involved.

Helium on earth was produced over billions of years by decay of elements, such as uranium.

Earth-helium's final destination is space, it just sticks around places like natural gas wells, then canisters, then party balloons, etc. But one way or the other Helium will end up in space. That's cool.

It being very very finite makes it pretty cool, too.

>This makes sense to me as printing money dilutes the value of currency, making everything more expensive across the board rather than one specific sector.

So, this relationship between money supply and inflation is definitely correct and likely a major driver of current inflation. However, money supply is not always the primary driver of inflation there are other drivers that can at times be more or less important.

Now, Dr. Friedman certainly believed that money supply was the primary cause of inflation. Though reading his most important work written with Ms. Schwartz he was not as dogmatic as you might see on old TV clips. Check out this bigger picture Wikipedia graph and you can see that the correlation between changes in money supply and inflation is not straightforward even when you consider delayed effects. Certainly if it were a simple relation then an independent central bank would have an easy time keeping inflation under control.

So, what else can drive inflation? Along with the supply of money another very important driver is the supply of things to buy with that money. For instance, if the supply of oil decreases and the supply of money were to stay the same, because oil is pretty necessary for our current society we would experience inflation. The bank of Australia has a broader primer on inflation that has more detail than I can get into here including the important aspect of peoples' behavior. Today both money supply, as you noted, but also many, supply, shocks, are driving inflation upwards quickly.

Good news: a market correction is definitely not the only way to reduce inflation. There are plenty of examples but a recent one is inflation rates dropped quite low through the 2010s with generally decent economic growth. Bad news: market downturns don't always bring down inflation either. Central banks are currently trying to reduce inflation without causing a major downturn. It is not an easy task, however, and there are many drivers of inflation that are out of the control of the reserve banks and governments.

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Why haven't we figured out a proper form of government that hears what the people want but also listens to common sense?

Also, why do we still allow lobbyists?

The dive issue wouldn't really play in here though because nitrogen dissolves in the blood over time due to breathing pressurized air. If the pressure was enough of a difference you could be crushed, but just as importantly when the pressure disappears your lungs could explode I suppose if you didn't breathe out.

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What is the most comprehensive language spoken by another species?

Why is pi the value that it is and not some other value? Is there something inherent in the way that dimensions interact to produce this ratio of pi?

During history different kind of economic systems have been used, and we have now in our modern times found one which is until what we know the most effective in being managed, but also keeping up with the enormous economical growth.

It is that managing part which is the most important part, and you can see it fall apart the moment it does not happen. Like with corruption, bubbles, internal trading/communication and monopolies.

Economists all over the world are always trying to find improvements to the current model, or are even trying to create a new model. But a new model would require a mass transition which certainly not everybody would want or be prepared for

No, while there is some proof to say that he encouraged or even managed a insurrection on the 6th of January. We can’t really say that he is a “serial insurrectionist. It was as some political scientists call it a populist wave. Trump won the election due to a bad opponent and a lot of uncertainty knowing Obama would be gone, the wars in the Middle East not going great, economic dissatisfaction (even though the economy was largely fine) and China on the rise. But after those 4 years he lost immediately to Joe Biden, and the republicans even began to keep their distance, which says a lot about how “trump was the Republican Party”

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While I can not say a specific course, some YouTubers are pretty close to get a basic understanding of economics and everything that evolves around it.

Economics explained for example

That is certainly a possibility.

We have seen in history that even the smallest differences in geographical location and population could have created different diseases. If we indeed find life on another planet then there is a big change that they have their own world of diseases, parasites and microorganisms

Let me first start with the lobbyist part. This is part is mostly seen in systems where this is ingrained in political culture. The Netherlands for example has 1 time a year where lobbyists can go and talk to the political parties and representatives about their ideals. The rest of the year it can be seen as political fraud if handled in certain ways.

The USA Political system has a large portion of it ingrained in its economical standards. This means that it is not only ingrained but seen as normal by a lot of people, and certainly does who are in power or benefit from it. Lobbying is also part of our economical systems due to the influence on production these huge conglomerates have.

“Why haven’t we figured out a proper form of government”

I think the answer to that can be pretty short. People are and will always think different of things. If you benefit from something, then that system si great. If you do not benefit from it the system is terrible. There will always be a divide in race, class and wealth which influences our progression in political thinking

Because it would be as tiring as COVID to hear it on the news everyday.

The DOJ and the Biden administration are certainly NOT ignoring these kinds of problems because they are crucial in governing our modern states and economic systems. They just don’t feel like sharing every single detail, every single plan and everything single procedure with the masses. Because the masses have a bad record when it comes to reacting to stuff which they don’t fully understand or have a really strong but useless opinion about

Same question can be asked for politics.

If you say is the economy a science the answer would be: NO

If you say is the parliament or congress a science the answer would be: NO

But if you would ask is the reasoning behind certain actions, the way of working/thinking, the way of policy building, the way of managing, the different ideas and concepts in economics and politics are those science?: the answer would be: Yea

Is it though so obvious? Because herbivores have canines too. And like herbivores, we only have a small opening of the mouth, a non-scissoring opening of the mouth and the teeth line is unaligned with the articulation point of the jaws (which is how it is for herbivores). Also with regards to the mouth, we drink water by aspiration (like herbivores), whereas carnivores bring the water in with their tongue. We also don't need to get vitamin A directly from animals as we are able to synthesise it ourselves from vegies, like herbivores and unlike carnivores. So it seems to me that we are mainly plant eating machines with a certain but very small degree of meat processing capabilities. Thank you for the reply my friend!

"Ever" is a long time, but I don't think we will solve economics as it is defined today. Maybe if we reframe the problem somehow, and in the process change the way society deals with money and allocation of resources.

Another problem is that if it was "solved", who gets rich or poor would be predetermined and probably could be changed as we want. How could that work? Who would accept a system where the results of a lifetime of work are fixed and you cannot change them? Communism had a big problem with this, nobody bothered to do a good job at work, because it made no difference to your income or status or anything like that.

Really great reply thank you! I should have known it wouldn't be so clear cut. Thank you for your time, I'm going to dig into the sources you linked now.

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It’s interesting, isn’t it? We humans like to classify things and give them clean, well defined labels. And we often have a good reason to, since there is obviously something going on. It’s not like these labels are entirely arbitrary. But pinning down the nature of the label is often exceedingly difficult. I suppose that’s the difference between ideals and reality. I mean, we all know the difference between a bowl and a vase, but where does one start and where does one end?

This is a common theme in any discipline that studies complex systems. Especially linguistics. It’s a bit of a tragedy of language science as many linguists confidently operate in notions that have very weak theoretical foundation. There is a lot of unspoken assumption, driven by tradition, in the linguistic theory, and not enough people question the tradition IMO. I mean, starting with such basic things like “meaning” or “word”.

Thanks. I'll check that out

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I would definitely not use Economic Explained as an intro to economics, EE in reality is on the lower end of quality for pop-economics related content.

A better alternative is something like Marginal Revolution University which create videos on Economic theory, applications, etc. These videos are created by actual professional economists who are active in publishing. Plus, it delves in to the actual theory itself, which EE doesn't really do.
I especially recommend MRU's Mastering Econometrics series which feature Joshua Angrist (Nobel Prize Winning Economist) explaining Econometrics (a challenging field) in a fun and comprehensive way that most can just pick up and understand.

Alternatively, picking up an introductory Microeconomics or Macroeconomics textbook is reliable too, even if less engaging.

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Maybe dolphins. There's a video I watched in a linguistics class that was investigating dolphin communication using dolphins that were trained to perform in dolphin shows with various hand signals from their trainers. They had a hand signal for "together" that typically was used to have the dolphins coordinate jumping out of the water or something similar at the same time. So the trainers would use hand signals to say "do a flip together" and the two dolphins would time it so they were flipping at the same time. Pretty cool but not anything crazy. They had another hand signal that basically told the dolphin to "make up a trick", when they used this hand signal typically the dolphin would do some kind of flip or jump or whatever they felt like doing. In this video they had 2 dolphins, and they combined hand signals to tell them "make up a trick together". You can see in the video the two dolphins swim down to the bottom of the pool, squeak at each other a bit, and then come up and do the exact same thing at the exact same time.

I think communication becomes language when you can use it to express new ideas, and this is the only example I've seen of that obviously displayed in animals. I'll see if I can find the video, it is really cool.

The distance is really hard for me to really understand. Currently the fastest manned vehicle we have has been capable of about 17,000 mph. At that speed it would take right around a 855600 years to reach 667CC. I'm sure we'll wait for better technology before attempting that kind of trip.

Non-carbon based lifeforms - definitely hypothetically possible. Unfortunately we don't currently have evidence of lifeforms using anything but carbon biochemistry. My personal belief is it is absolutely possible. Silicon has quite a few similarities to carbon and that's just an example of life having an analogous biochemistry. Who knows what's possible with the diversity that could be experienced in different environments?

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Radar astronomy is the closest equivalent I'm aware of...you basically send out a radio pulse and get the reflection back. I don't think you could make it work effectively with visible light, the amount of illumination (and therefore energy) you would need would be huge.

Also, if you did somehow figure it out and published your results, the traders and businessmen would read your papers and alter their behavior based on what you wrote....which would change the underlying behavior of the market and probably make your discovery invalid.

Physics (the particle physics part) is the behavior of elementary particles.

Chemistry is the behavior atoms made of elementary particles interacting with each other via electric charge.

Cell Biology is the behavior of a big stew of hideously complex chemicals in bags of water.

Organismal biology is the behavior of millions of those bags of chemical water all stuck together.

Ecology is the behavior of millions of those organisms interacting across the surface of the earth.

Economics is like ecology, but you are looking at all the intelligent organisms, who are much more behaviorally complex and who occasionally do things like read your economics papers and alter their own behavior in response.

It's no wonder it's complicated!

I thought it could be just for a moment, or a few seconds, like a camera flash, but is the large energy consumption because you'd need a long exposure, and thus, you'd need to run the laser for a super long time, to get an image?

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I think your answer is good for speech but it is overly specific.

OP asked about language, this answer is only about speech.

There are good theoretical arguments that the first languages were in fact sign languages (the gesture-first hypthesis) https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-016-1117-3 . This article is quite accessible and lists some of the main arguments for it (while ultimately coming to a conclusion that the author things they arrose at the same time).

One argument I remember but that that article didn't mention was the benefits of gesture during hunts and ambushes though, co-ordinating these with spoken language doesn't work all that well unless the hunter is already afoot. And we do see hunter gatherer societies with sign languages (or rather, it is the same language using sign) today still.

Other arguments that are in the article include primates already existing gestural systems, as well as the ability and capacity to teach them some symbolic gestures from sign languages (no, koko did not 'know sign language', but she did know some signs).

As we see this in our modern primate cousins, a greater affinity for signed languages as compared to complex vocalisations, I'd ask why would our ancestors be different? Given the advantages to signed languages at particular times, the developing hand and tool manipulation skills our ancesters were fostering, and the likely already existing gestural system, I'd agree that the gesture-first hypothesis is at least plausible.

No, a large percentage of muscles acting on fingers and wrist are in forearm

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