(Part 2) Top products from r/NoStupidQuestions

This is such a great question! One that we have been trying to answer for as long as people have had thought. For a very long time we had a set of traits and behaviours that we thought were unique to humans, that set us apart and above from all the other animals. This list is getting smaller and contains more caveats as time goes on. It wasn't long ago that we thought humans were the only tool makers, only to be shown that tool making & modification is pretty pervasive throughout the animal kingdom.

There are three things that set us apart from other animals and that are truly unique to our species (in so far as we understand today):

1. Aspects of language
   
2. Shared intentionality
   
3. Cumulative culture
   
   Language isn't completely unique to us. Many aspects of complex language thought once to be only found in humans have been described in animal communication. For example, there are a growing number of species known to us that make specific calls for specific situations. Some monkeys will make a specific call for a land predator like a jaguar vs. a sky predator like a hawk. Some species have even demonstrated rudimentary syntax. Finally, calls are also used to convey complex states or ideas - for example some species are able to use their calls to deceive (which is a very advanced cognitive ability in of itself). They make a warning call to distract the group while they sneak off and get some tasty piece of food that they otherwise would have had to compete for. We are really only beginning to scratch the surface of animal communication and the more we discover the more we realize just how complex their communication systems can be. It can't be denied that other species lack a certain "something" that we seem to have. They aren't able to communicate quite like us, but to say that animals lack language outright is to do a disservice to the complexity of language that they do have.
   
   Cooperation is seen throughout the animal kingdom in abundance. Animals cooperate all the time, especially social animals like primates. In fact there are some species that are so reliant on cooperation that they can't survive or breed without it. These animals are called cooperative breeders. Species like naked mole rats, meerkats, bees, and callitrichid monkeys require the aid of others to help raise their offspring. Other individuals in the group will forgo their own breeding to insure the survival of the dominant pair's offspring. A great novel on this subject is called Mothers and Others. There are many great experiments that require the cooperation of two individuals to solve, these have been successfully completed by many different species of monkeys and apes as well as non-primate species like elephants. In addition many species hunt in groups that requires significant cooperation and coordination. A lone wolf isn't going to take down a great big bison, they need to cooperate in order to take down their next prey. But again, there is something that is unique about the way humans cooperate, and this is more accurately referred to as shared intentionality*.* Humans can visualize a common goal and cooperatively work towards that goal. "Shared intentionality, sometimes called ‘we’ intentionality, refers to collaborative interactions in which participants share psychological states with one another...For example, in problem- solving activities participants may have a shared goal and shared action plans for pursuing that goal, and in communication they may simply share experience with one another linguistically. The big Vygotskian idea is that what makes human cognition different is not more individual brainpower, but rather the ability of humans to learn through other persons and their artifacts, and to collaborate with others in collective activities (Tomasello, 1999; Tomasello, Carpenter, Call, Behne & Moll, 2005a; Tomasello, Kruger & Ratner, 1993)." Its a step up from the classical cooperation we see in animals. Its the reason why 150 human strangers can get on a plane and cooperate and why 150 animals that were strangers could not.
   
   Finally, the last trait that is unique to humans (although newer research may be demonstrating this in some primate species) is cumulative culture*.* Humans have the unique ability to not only share psychological states we have the ability to store intergenerational information and share that information quickly and efficiently with others. This information can be rapidly dispersed through a group (or between groups) and is quickly passed on from one generation to another. Now, we know that animals share all sorts of information and that individuals do learn from each other. For example, a single female Japanese Macaque decide to start washing her potatoes in the sea. Within a vert short period of time nearly everyone, but especially the young individuals, were washing their potatoes too. Over successive generations different washing techniques have been added in, and even different foods are washed. But its a great example of a single individual introducing a new behaviour to a group which suddenly spreads amongst all its individuals. Its a great example of animals having a distinct culture. But humans just take this to the next level. Where it takes years or even decades for a chimpanzee to master the use tools requires to get termites out of a termite mound it would take humans seconds. Moreover, most animals can only learn these complex behaviour if they are taught or observe these behaviours while they are young. Adult humans are much better at picking up new traits, behaviours, and skills as compared to other adult animals. We simply are faster at sharing and absorbing information and this has led to our unique trait of cumulative culture.
   
   The actual physiological mechanisms that allow these things to happen are unknown. We don't know how or why we evolved these traits. No genes have been identified. We don't even have a clear idea when these traits evolved within our own species. All we know is that we seem to have them and they do not, which is why we have gone to the moon, have complex maths, and galaxy print jeggings and they do not.

A few I've gotten into recently:

https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/055338371X - Emotional Intelligence - it's about the difference between your brain's rational/logical/analytical processing and emotional/intuitive processing, and why they both matter.

https://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/B0032COUMC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1541098584&sr=1-3&keywords=drive - Drive - it's about how motivation works, particularly in the workplace but also in personal life, and how freedom, mastery, and a sense of purpose can motivate people to do greater things than classic rewards and punishments will.

https://drgabormate.com/book/scattered-minds/ - Scattered - it's mostly about ADHD, but it has some really interesting stuff about the psychology of sensitive minds and how they can be damaged by childhood stress. The book focuses mainly on the psychological aspects of ADHD, and less on the medication and how-to-fix-it stuff that the more self-helpy ADHD books talk about.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034 - How to Win Friends and Influence People - it's an older book with a weirdly folksy tone to it compared to modern books, but it still has some great advice. It doesn't dive deep into psychology, really. It's mostly about how little changes to how you approach social situations can have big effects on how people feel about you and whether or not they'll listen to what you have to say. For example, people unconsciously feel better when they hear their own name, so it helps to deliberately remember and use the names of people you meet.

Get better headphones. My over the ear Sennheisers I can wear all day.

I guess you can try stretching out the band that goes over your head? You get what you pay for. Alternatively, these are a very cheap option that sound decent and are comfy, but they bleed audio like nothing else and don't block out any external noises (so in a way, safer than earbuds if walking around town), so they work best if you're in a somewhat quiet area by yourself.

We don't really know. It could be literally infinite, but it's too large to understand.

One interesting take I heard, while reading Lawrence Krauss' A Universe From Nothing was the idea that we're just a microverse within a grand universe.

I can't explain for shit, but picture it like this: you have a massive, single Universe. It's a whirling, unstable realm of probability and crashing dimensions, with an unfathomable size.

In this grand Universe, a eight separate dimensions collide and release a huge amount of energy. It bubbles outward for a hundred thousand years or so, then collapses. A separate location has six dimensions collide, creating some matter and antimatter, expands for a billion years or so, theb collapses. This is happening billions of times per second, with most of those little bubbles forming and immediately collapsing, a few others lasting for a billion or so years, and a very few stabilizing and lasting nearly indefinitely.

Our universe is that last one. Just a single, tiny expanding bubble. A galaxy in a larger universe. There are probably others, but they are so far apart that there is no way to imagine the distance (the nearest stable 'verse could be two trillion 'verse-lengths away).

Read Watchmen by Alan Moore. It's not really a traditional superhero comic, but it's excellent and it's the most famous comic book / graphic novel in the world. You'll enjoy it.

There isn't a universal tech tree in real life. It's kind of hard to say any culture is "more advanced" than another when they're so different. It's especially hard when we just don't know that much about the native societies in the Americas pre-Columbus. There's a really amazing book called '1491' by Charles C. Mann that's a pretty easy read and probably the best summary of our understanding of pre-Columbian America and would answer a lot of your questions.

There’s also a book that covers this the topic of common patterns in nature, and goes into depth on how it applies to organisms of all sizes. Extremely interesting:

https://www.amazon.com/Scale-Universal-Innovation-Sustainability-Organisms/dp/1594205582

The answer seems to be “when working in 3 dimensions, there’s efficient ways to do things, so natural selection will tend towards them over time.“

For example, if there’s two ways to construct a circulatory system, moving the same amount of blood, but one moves blood with less energy, this frees up energy for reproductive activities, providing an advantage to that organism.

But these “laws of 3D construction” apply not just to veins/arteries, but to your brain, trees, and even cities’ sewers and power cables.

It’s all about efficient networks co-living in a single “organism”

Yes. The size of "invariant components" like cells set a limit on how small things can be. But cells are not the only component for which that is true. When it comes to mammals, the more important limiting factor is the circulatory system - mainly the size of the capillaries. The smallest mammal is the Etruscan shrew. And this is basically the smallest a mammal can be in theory. When you shrink a mammalian circulatory system smaller than a shrew's it becomes wildly inefficient. So mammals have never evolved to be smaller, even when it could have provided other advantages.

The circulatory system is also the reason why the blue whale is pretty much the biggest possible mammal. If they get any bigger, the space between capillaries becomes too large, and cells start to starve of oxygen.

There is an interesting book called Scale that goes into this topic is detail.

There is a great chapter about this in the book Sapiens. If this is your kind of thing, you will probably love that book. Basically, humans drove them to extinction through hunting and habitat loss due to farming and agriculture. As humans became better hunters with more advanced tools, it became more advantageous to be smaller and hide than it did to be large and able to fight. As human communication and cooperation advanced, they became better hunters through teamwork and coordination. They also began to desire a greater prize (a large kill that could feed their booming population). The evidence in support of this is the fact that large species thrived in places where humans were not. As humans expanded across the globe, the large species began to vanish from those places.

Highly recommend the book, but you can read about it here too.

1491 is a pretty solid book that talks a great deal about how things were before a lot of the conventional European settling went on in the Americas/pre Columbian Exchange.

Basically it'll exemplify why a lot of that "the New World was this empty place with nothing going on" way of thinking is a load of horse shit considering how there was pretty intricate stuff in play.

OP here are a few

https://hyperchiller.com/products/hyperchiller-iced-coffee-maker

A mug which allegedly freezes even hot drinks in 60 seconds, requires the container to be put in the freezer before hand.


RCS Cooper Cooler Rapid Beverage-Chilling Appliance HC01C https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0000U3CIW/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_nCNNBb5MG25EZ

This Amazon product which for a cool ba-dum-tsss £130 can chill a can, or even upto a bottle in 2 mins

Hope this helps, OP

I mean the simplest and most straight forward is better air circulation(unless the air outside is bad). Not sure whether it would be better to push air out or pull it in... Or you could get one that does both.

Bionaire Window Fan

I imagine that you could find a cheaper one, found this one with 30 sec of googling.

By continuity, do you dislike not knowing the backstory of the characters, or you literally can't decipher which order the cells on the pages are supposed to be in?

There are a lot of graphic novel paperbacks that are collected story arcs (or even the whole series).
Watchmen and Sandman (10 volumes) you can read from beginning to end. And they are awesome.
And there are one's like Ms Marvel that are several individual comics collected so you can follow a whole story. You'll get enough backstory at the beginning to understand what all is happening.

/u/johnnycomet has you covered if you don't like the "graphic" part of graphic novels.

Buy magic shave powder (cream isn't that good). Best decision I made in regards to grooming. Works great on your asshole too. Shaving and trimming never got it that smooth before. Make sure to test on a few areas. Test was fine on my forearms, tried it on my back and my skin became ashy, moisturizer fixed it up easily so no real problem.

I would consult all the literature that has been written about this and speak to therapists/researchers/psychologist/social scientists who study this area. I would take notes from them on what are some "best practice" advice for becoming a more stable and emotionally aware individual. There are books on this stuff written by legitimate folks.

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One example:

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https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Intelligence-Matter-More-Than/dp/055338371X

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I find it absurd that such important self-knowledge is not taught. Most parents suck at this shit and don't pass down the information to their kids.

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Generating heat is a lot easier than removing heat.

There are also small machines that cool things quickly, for example.

Even if you're doing it at home, I'd suggest having a 2nd person do it for you.

Technically, you want to use clippers when you're buzzing your hair, a razor would be for shaving the head completely bare.

This is the #1 rated product on Amazon right now and it's pretty solid. It comes with guards that allow you to set it everywhere between 1" and 1/8".

Stick with something that plugs into the wall - cordless sucks.

Until very recently, I had a 2006 vehicle with just a tape deck. So I bought one of these and plugged it into the headphone jack of my phone. Worked surprisingly well.

Do you want a solution or just BlahBlahBlah?
If you want a solution.......http://www.amazon.com/Bionaire-BW2300-Window-Remote-Control/dp/B000065DKJ

Anticlockwise clocks do exist.

They only really exist as a novelty. Clockwise is just conventional and therefore most widely used. Standardising the direction makes it easier to read at a glance.

You could buy a water bottle brush like this

You can try separated headphones like this: http://www.amazon.com/Koss-KSC75-Portable-Stereophone-Headphones/dp/B0006B486K

Then you just wear one ear.

Yeah, here ya go OP:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000796XXM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_yI58Bb04X3NBH

If your car has a cassette player you can use a cassette adapter http://www.amazon.com/RCA-AH600R-Car-Cassette-Adapter/dp/B000BUN79K/

or you can try an fm transmitter. It broadcasts a radio signal at a certain frequency and you simply set your car radio to that frequency. http://www.amazon.com/Patuoxun-Transmitter-Adapter-Galaxsy-Charger/dp/B00GLPG03Y/

http://www.amazon.com/TeckNet-F27-Car-Universal-Transmitter/dp/B001AIM5ZE/

Depends on what you consider highly radioactive.

You can buy Uranium on Amazon and let us know.

Nope, something like this. It is basically just baking soda, talcum powder, and herbs to smell fresh and reduce chafing. A friend of mine had a bad foot odor and it wasn't until he started using it that it went away.

I had the same problem, and so I would rarely eat apples.

I finally bought an apple slicer, and that made all the difference. I started eating apples pretty regularly after that.

Kinda. Foot powder exists.

Since smelly feet is caused by moisture, etc. Using this can help to minimize any issues with smell which in effect is a kind of 'deodorant.'

This is the right answer. Get one of these
You'll eat way more apples this way.

Edit: fixed link

http://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-WT1-Drinking-Water/dp/B000FBMAVQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1453321747&sr=8-1&keywords=lead+water+test+kit

Sure we do.
Also because that's the way the shadow of a sundial turns

How often do you wash it? If you strictly use it for coffee, and you rinse it out, say, at the end of each day, you could just use water. Or you could greatly reduce the amount of dishsoap you use.

If that doesn't work, you could buy something like this, meant to more thoroughly scrub the insides of hard-to-reach containers.

You should check out A Universe From Nothing by Lawrence Krauss. The whole book is an attempt to answer that very question.

Here's the amazon page

I know these were around for a while: http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Product-Beauty-Shower-Purification/dp/B000PI13SU

Not sure if they work or not

I actually use this: https://www.amazon.com/Softsheen-Magic-Conditioning-Shaving-Platinum/dp/B0000532Q5/ref=sr_1_4_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1469200522


It is easy to use and no risk of cutting yourself open

I ordered a Whal kit months ago and have been cutting my own hair ever since. With their manual, it becomes very difficult to screw your hair up.

Link

Thanks. I live in an old building. I basically want to do a test for things that will kill me in the short or long run.

I found this.

https://www.amazon.com/Watersafe-WS425B-Drinking-Water-Test/dp/B00005AUHX

and this

https://www.amazon.com/First-Alert-WT1-Drinking-Water/dp/B000FBMAVQ/

Hopefully it's enough.

I realize this sounds crazy considering 99% of tap water is safe to drink (according to the comments in this post). I'd rather be paranoid then dead.

What about chlorine? I suspect my chlorinated water is why my hair is dry and frizzy no matter what I do. Pools wreck it too.

Reviews on the shower filter someone linked above seem to maybe corroborate that http://www.amazon.com/Jonathan-Product-Beauty-Shower-Purification/dp/B000PI13SU

It really depends on the species. Different species have different mechanisms to recognize familiar or unfamiliar individuals. For example, birds will recognize the call of individuals in neighbouring territories. If a new bird takes over a territory the neighbours will swoop in and will try to re-establish new boundary lines. Other species use scent to tell individuals apart. Still others use social bonding to establish long-lasting relationships. For some species its a really important skill to have. This is especially true for social species as being able to tell who might be a friend or who might be a foe can mean the difference between life and death.

I recommend the book mothers and others to explore the diversity of relationships between offspring and caregivers within the animal kingdom. For mammals there is certainly a period of stress for all individuals concerned during weaning. The offspring want to continue to nurse and the mother (or other) would rather they be weaned so that they can continue on with their own lives. This creates conflict, and where there is conflict there is trouble. For example, primate infants will throw literal tantrums when their mothers deny them milk. Eventually weaning ends and the baby grows up into a juvenile and the nature of the bond between the mother and their offspring changes. If that offspring continues to live within the group the mother will very likely continue to recognize it as kin. This is especially true for animals with social hierarchies like many primate species, or species that require a solid matriarchal structure, like elephants. If that offspring disperses a chance meeting later on may or may not reveal the extent to which those individuals know each other. Again, long lived highly social species tend to also have long memories which enable them to form bonds that transcend time and space. So in this case a chance meeting with a long-lost son or daughter for a primate may result in a meeting that is less violent or aggressive as compared to a meeting with an individual for whom they have no established history.

In other cases there are plenty of species that never establish these bonds or long-term relationships. Out-of-sight is out-of-mind. The biological mechanisms that help identify kin from non-kin (e.g. familiarity, pheromones) may be weak or poorly established. In these cases without constant interaction individuals will begin to see others as strangers even if they grew up together. This is how and why incest occurs with such regularity in the animal kingdom.

When we miss something there is a very complex set of cognitive abilities that is taking place within our brains. Not only are we remembering something from our past but we are also projecting into the future something that we desire. No doubt many animals can miss objects or individuals. For example, mothers (and others) will call out and search for lost offspring sometimes for hours or days. But how long that emotion or memory extends into the future is relatively unknown. So far as we understand very few species, if any, can project their thoughts forward to some future time or state. They may be able to do so at the immediate onset of the trigger, but not necessarily much longer than that. Do animals mourn the loss of individuals? Most show no signs, those that do so signs for a few hours or days, even fewer - were talking perhaps a handful of species - appear to be able to continue to remember individuals and their loss once they are gone. It is that ability to think into the future and to remember the past in significant detail that most species lack. Most species live in the "now", and thus I suppose it is a small comfort to know that in your case that the mother squirrel does not miss her babies and the babies do not miss their mother.