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opisska
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
Poland8852 Posts
November 27 2016 08:00 GMT
#10641
On November 27 2016 16:38 GreenHorizons wrote:
Anyone know the failure rate of dental offices, anecdotally a friend and I noticed all of the offices we were aware of as kids were still operating (though several moved to nicer buildings) and we wondered, "they must fail sometimes, but is it significantly less frequent than other businesses?"

I want to know, but I couldn't figure it out after cursory google searches. Help?


In Czech, there is a critical shortage of dental care and you pay silly amounts for it as a lot is not through insurance. The only reason to close is that you run out of space to stash the money.
"Jeez, that's far from ideal." - Serral, the king of mild trashtalk
TL+ Member
AbouSV
Profile Joined October 2014
Germany1278 Posts
November 27 2016 17:21 GMT
#10642
About the same in France.
Many dentists have delays higher than a month for any appointment.
JimmiC
Profile Blog Joined May 2011
Canada22817 Posts
November 27 2016 17:59 GMT
#10643
--- Nuked ---
Sent.
Profile Joined June 2012
Poland9299 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-11-27 18:31:04
November 27 2016 18:30 GMT
#10644
On November 27 2016 12:55 Epishade wrote:
In the episode where Spongebob gets the shrink ray, he accidentally shrinks everybody in Bikini Bottom and they all get mad at him and start beating him up for being shrunk. To remedy this problem, he shrinks Bikini Bottom too, so that everybody is able to live as they did before, with everything at the same relative size. Assuming they had no outside contact and were isolationist, would they run into any problems, or was this an effective solution?


Maybe something like this could be a problem (0:40)
+ Show Spoiler +
You're now breathing manually
RvB
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
Netherlands6274 Posts
November 27 2016 18:43 GMT
#10645
The private bank I worked at for a while had a whole department just for medical professionals. This included dentists. The reason they're so attractive is that they make a lot of money and usually have a job for life. So yeah default rates are relatively low.
JimmiC
Profile Blog Joined May 2011
Canada22817 Posts
November 27 2016 19:01 GMT
#10646
--- Nuked ---
Karis Vas Ryaar
Profile Blog Joined July 2011
United States4396 Posts
November 28 2016 06:33 GMT
#10647
Is there a good introduction to the basics of photography anywhere? I want to understand what I'm actually doing but don't want like a full course or anything. Book suggestions are fine.
"I'm not agreeing with a lot of Virus's decisions but they are working" Tasteless. Ipl4 Losers Bracket Virus 2-1 Maru
Cascade
Profile Blog Joined March 2006
Australia5405 Posts
November 28 2016 09:58 GMT
#10648
On November 27 2016 12:55 Epishade wrote:
In the episode where Spongebob gets the shrink ray, he accidentally shrinks everybody in Bikini Bottom and they all get mad at him and start beating him up for being shrunk. To remedy this problem, he shrinks Bikini Bottom too, so that everybody is able to live as they did before, with everything at the same relative size. Assuming they had no outside contact and were isolationist, would they run into any problems, or was this an effective solution?

Changing size of animals suffer from the square-cube law: en.wikipedia.org. Specially, our muscles act through electromagnetism which essentially scale with the square of the size, while gravity and inertia scales with the cube. This presents a large problem for scaling up the size of land animals, which is the parade example of the square cube principle. However, it is not as clean in aquatic animals (as mentioned in wiki), and even less so when it comes to shrinking an animal (not mentioned).

So would they notice? Yes, no doubt. Even ignoring the rest of the world sudenly going 2x as big, everyone would be twice as strong when it comes to interacting with other things also scaled down 50%. They'd notice immediately.

Would they survive? Not sure. I'd guess that the internal organs of most animals wouldn't survive a factor 2 increase in muscle compared inertia. How would the now too-strong heart cope? Digestion? Breathing? No idea. So well, I can't immediately point out something that'd kill them, but making a guess, I think there will be something internal that would be messed up.
opisska
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
Poland8852 Posts
November 28 2016 10:20 GMT
#10649
On November 28 2016 18:58 Cascade wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 27 2016 12:55 Epishade wrote:
In the episode where Spongebob gets the shrink ray, he accidentally shrinks everybody in Bikini Bottom and they all get mad at him and start beating him up for being shrunk. To remedy this problem, he shrinks Bikini Bottom too, so that everybody is able to live as they did before, with everything at the same relative size. Assuming they had no outside contact and were isolationist, would they run into any problems, or was this an effective solution?

Changing size of animals suffer from the square-cube law: en.wikipedia.org. Specially, our muscles act through electromagnetism which essentially scale with the square of the size, while gravity and inertia scales with the cube. This presents a large problem for scaling up the size of land animals, which is the parade example of the square cube principle. However, it is not as clean in aquatic animals (as mentioned in wiki), and even less so when it comes to shrinking an animal (not mentioned).

So would they notice? Yes, no doubt. Even ignoring the rest of the world sudenly going 2x as big, everyone would be twice as strong when it comes to interacting with other things also scaled down 50%. They'd notice immediately.

Would they survive? Not sure. I'd guess that the internal organs of most animals wouldn't survive a factor 2 increase in muscle compared inertia. How would the now too-strong heart cope? Digestion? Breathing? No idea. So well, I can't immediately point out something that'd kill them, but making a guess, I think there will be something internal that would be messed up.


I have seen several shrinking-themed stories and I always wandered, how is the shrinking even done at the molecular level? You can't realistically shrink atoms - even if you somehow created a matter for which atomic distances are indeed shrunk, you constantly exchange matter with your surroundings and that would blow you up pretty fast, not to mention that interactions between small and big atoms would probably be pretty funky in the first place - unless you had a tank with shrunk-oxygen, you'd suffocate instantly I guess.

Thus you need to make everything smaller using normal biomolecules. First, where do you put the surplus ones (and how do you get them back in place during unshrinking, should you plan to do that)? Second, you can't pick every n-th molecule to keep and run with it, the whole shrinking would basically mean a complete re-engineering of the whole body to work at the smaller size. We know that smaller life is possible, because it exists, but it is unclear to me, how small can we go while keeping the overall structure and function human-like. Our brain is pretty big and its size is a big issue in energy consumption, yet evolution thought it is a good idea to make it big - how much can we shrink it while retaining intelligence? Sure, there are people twice smaller than myself in volume, so some room exists But "tiny people" shrinks (like milimeter-scale) are probably out of question not only because of the brain but because you wouldn't be able to physically fit in a working digestive and circulatory system, just because you can't really shrink the cells (because of molecule sizes) and you just wouldn't fit enough different cells in the place to make it work.

That's pretty sad, because at those scales, you get all these interesting things (that are usually just glossed over), such as the surface tension making you unable to drink and microorganisms being physically threatening, but that's probably not gonna happen, because you'd be dead a long time before it from simply not having a working biology ...
"Jeez, that's far from ideal." - Serral, the king of mild trashtalk
TL+ Member
Acrofales
Profile Joined August 2010
Spain18292 Posts
November 28 2016 10:46 GMT
#10650
On November 28 2016 19:20 opisska wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 28 2016 18:58 Cascade wrote:
On November 27 2016 12:55 Epishade wrote:
In the episode where Spongebob gets the shrink ray, he accidentally shrinks everybody in Bikini Bottom and they all get mad at him and start beating him up for being shrunk. To remedy this problem, he shrinks Bikini Bottom too, so that everybody is able to live as they did before, with everything at the same relative size. Assuming they had no outside contact and were isolationist, would they run into any problems, or was this an effective solution?

Changing size of animals suffer from the square-cube law: en.wikipedia.org. Specially, our muscles act through electromagnetism which essentially scale with the square of the size, while gravity and inertia scales with the cube. This presents a large problem for scaling up the size of land animals, which is the parade example of the square cube principle. However, it is not as clean in aquatic animals (as mentioned in wiki), and even less so when it comes to shrinking an animal (not mentioned).

So would they notice? Yes, no doubt. Even ignoring the rest of the world sudenly going 2x as big, everyone would be twice as strong when it comes to interacting with other things also scaled down 50%. They'd notice immediately.

Would they survive? Not sure. I'd guess that the internal organs of most animals wouldn't survive a factor 2 increase in muscle compared inertia. How would the now too-strong heart cope? Digestion? Breathing? No idea. So well, I can't immediately point out something that'd kill them, but making a guess, I think there will be something internal that would be messed up.


I have seen several shrinking-themed stories and I always wandered, how is the shrinking even done at the molecular level? You can't realistically shrink atoms - even if you somehow created a matter for which atomic distances are indeed shrunk, you constantly exchange matter with your surroundings and that would blow you up pretty fast, not to mention that interactions between small and big atoms would probably be pretty funky in the first place - unless you had a tank with shrunk-oxygen, you'd suffocate instantly I guess.

Thus you need to make everything smaller using normal biomolecules. First, where do you put the surplus ones (and how do you get them back in place during unshrinking, should you plan to do that)? Second, you can't pick every n-th molecule to keep and run with it, the whole shrinking would basically mean a complete re-engineering of the whole body to work at the smaller size. We know that smaller life is possible, because it exists, but it is unclear to me, how small can we go while keeping the overall structure and function human-like. Our brain is pretty big and its size is a big issue in energy consumption, yet evolution thought it is a good idea to make it big - how much can we shrink it while retaining intelligence? Sure, there are people twice smaller than myself in volume, so some room exists But "tiny people" shrinks (like milimeter-scale) are probably out of question not only because of the brain but because you wouldn't be able to physically fit in a working digestive and circulatory system, just because you can't really shrink the cells (because of molecule sizes) and you just wouldn't fit enough different cells in the place to make it work.

That's pretty sad, because at those scales, you get all these interesting things (that are usually just glossed over), such as the surface tension making you unable to drink and microorganisms being physically threatening, but that's probably not gonna happen, because you'd be dead a long time before it from simply not having a working biology ...


Mhmmm. So if we can have the magic of a shrink ray, why can't we have the magic of shrunk atoms? If we posit magic in the first place, then we can posit magic to make the changed situation work. There is a magic universe of small atoms, and all the shrink ray does is convert your big atoms into small ones. If it is gradual then you can choose the atom size on a dial. And don't give me no fundamental laws of physics prohibiting that. We just posited that the world is magic. As long as it's still internally consistent, then it's fine.

Or do you read Harry Potter and complain that it's not realistic? Note that Harry Potter is not the best example, because it is textbook "because magic" trope. Mistborn is probably the best recent (popular) example of an internally consistent magical world, but it's a lot less well known.
opisska
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
Poland8852 Posts
November 28 2016 11:20 GMT
#10651
On November 28 2016 19:46 Acrofales wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 28 2016 19:20 opisska wrote:
On November 28 2016 18:58 Cascade wrote:
On November 27 2016 12:55 Epishade wrote:
In the episode where Spongebob gets the shrink ray, he accidentally shrinks everybody in Bikini Bottom and they all get mad at him and start beating him up for being shrunk. To remedy this problem, he shrinks Bikini Bottom too, so that everybody is able to live as they did before, with everything at the same relative size. Assuming they had no outside contact and were isolationist, would they run into any problems, or was this an effective solution?

Changing size of animals suffer from the square-cube law: en.wikipedia.org. Specially, our muscles act through electromagnetism which essentially scale with the square of the size, while gravity and inertia scales with the cube. This presents a large problem for scaling up the size of land animals, which is the parade example of the square cube principle. However, it is not as clean in aquatic animals (as mentioned in wiki), and even less so when it comes to shrinking an animal (not mentioned).

So would they notice? Yes, no doubt. Even ignoring the rest of the world sudenly going 2x as big, everyone would be twice as strong when it comes to interacting with other things also scaled down 50%. They'd notice immediately.

Would they survive? Not sure. I'd guess that the internal organs of most animals wouldn't survive a factor 2 increase in muscle compared inertia. How would the now too-strong heart cope? Digestion? Breathing? No idea. So well, I can't immediately point out something that'd kill them, but making a guess, I think there will be something internal that would be messed up.


I have seen several shrinking-themed stories and I always wandered, how is the shrinking even done at the molecular level? You can't realistically shrink atoms - even if you somehow created a matter for which atomic distances are indeed shrunk, you constantly exchange matter with your surroundings and that would blow you up pretty fast, not to mention that interactions between small and big atoms would probably be pretty funky in the first place - unless you had a tank with shrunk-oxygen, you'd suffocate instantly I guess.

Thus you need to make everything smaller using normal biomolecules. First, where do you put the surplus ones (and how do you get them back in place during unshrinking, should you plan to do that)? Second, you can't pick every n-th molecule to keep and run with it, the whole shrinking would basically mean a complete re-engineering of the whole body to work at the smaller size. We know that smaller life is possible, because it exists, but it is unclear to me, how small can we go while keeping the overall structure and function human-like. Our brain is pretty big and its size is a big issue in energy consumption, yet evolution thought it is a good idea to make it big - how much can we shrink it while retaining intelligence? Sure, there are people twice smaller than myself in volume, so some room exists But "tiny people" shrinks (like milimeter-scale) are probably out of question not only because of the brain but because you wouldn't be able to physically fit in a working digestive and circulatory system, just because you can't really shrink the cells (because of molecule sizes) and you just wouldn't fit enough different cells in the place to make it work.

That's pretty sad, because at those scales, you get all these interesting things (that are usually just glossed over), such as the surface tension making you unable to drink and microorganisms being physically threatening, but that's probably not gonna happen, because you'd be dead a long time before it from simply not having a working biology ...


Mhmmm. So if we can have the magic of a shrink ray, why can't we have the magic of shrunk atoms? If we posit magic in the first place, then we can posit magic to make the changed situation work. There is a magic universe of small atoms, and all the shrink ray does is convert your big atoms into small ones. If it is gradual then you can choose the atom size on a dial. And don't give me no fundamental laws of physics prohibiting that. We just posited that the world is magic. As long as it's still internally consistent, then it's fine.

Or do you read Harry Potter and complain that it's not realistic? Note that Harry Potter is not the best example, because it is textbook "because magic" trope. Mistborn is probably the best recent (popular) example of an internally consistent magical world, but it's a lot less well known.


Well "because magic" solves everything, right? But if we aim for some consistency, then, as I said, the main issue is the interaction with real-size atoms. Your whole body is built upon a delicate balance of chemical reactions. Let's imagine that being "magically" shrunk by shrink each atom. Then you still need to breathe and eat and real-size atoms just aren't gonna play along very well with this. Essentially to shrink the atom you need to change mass and charge of all elementary particles and then within themselves, they would work fine, but normal atoms would be very exotic and probably terribly poisonous substances to them.

Now the big question is, what changes you would actually make to make this work? Naively, one would just cut a piece out of every elementary particle - but that would actually have the opposite effect, because quantum mechanics is silly and lighter particles have larger wavelengths. As your size is determined by atomic/molecular forces, not nuclear ones, it could actually work to mess only with electrons and you would just need to make them heavier for everything to shrink. But then suddenly all energy scales would go way up, all the chemistry in you would both require and produce much more heat - this would mean that the world around you would suddenly be freezing cold and I am not even sure at what scale it would become physically unfeasible to energetically sustain basic metabolism because of the sheer volume of food that you'd need to consume to stay barely alive.
"Jeez, that's far from ideal." - Serral, the king of mild trashtalk
TL+ Member
Acrofales
Profile Joined August 2010
Spain18292 Posts
November 28 2016 11:59 GMT
#10652
On November 28 2016 20:20 opisska wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 28 2016 19:46 Acrofales wrote:
On November 28 2016 19:20 opisska wrote:
On November 28 2016 18:58 Cascade wrote:
On November 27 2016 12:55 Epishade wrote:
In the episode where Spongebob gets the shrink ray, he accidentally shrinks everybody in Bikini Bottom and they all get mad at him and start beating him up for being shrunk. To remedy this problem, he shrinks Bikini Bottom too, so that everybody is able to live as they did before, with everything at the same relative size. Assuming they had no outside contact and were isolationist, would they run into any problems, or was this an effective solution?

Changing size of animals suffer from the square-cube law: en.wikipedia.org. Specially, our muscles act through electromagnetism which essentially scale with the square of the size, while gravity and inertia scales with the cube. This presents a large problem for scaling up the size of land animals, which is the parade example of the square cube principle. However, it is not as clean in aquatic animals (as mentioned in wiki), and even less so when it comes to shrinking an animal (not mentioned).

So would they notice? Yes, no doubt. Even ignoring the rest of the world sudenly going 2x as big, everyone would be twice as strong when it comes to interacting with other things also scaled down 50%. They'd notice immediately.

Would they survive? Not sure. I'd guess that the internal organs of most animals wouldn't survive a factor 2 increase in muscle compared inertia. How would the now too-strong heart cope? Digestion? Breathing? No idea. So well, I can't immediately point out something that'd kill them, but making a guess, I think there will be something internal that would be messed up.


I have seen several shrinking-themed stories and I always wandered, how is the shrinking even done at the molecular level? You can't realistically shrink atoms - even if you somehow created a matter for which atomic distances are indeed shrunk, you constantly exchange matter with your surroundings and that would blow you up pretty fast, not to mention that interactions between small and big atoms would probably be pretty funky in the first place - unless you had a tank with shrunk-oxygen, you'd suffocate instantly I guess.

Thus you need to make everything smaller using normal biomolecules. First, where do you put the surplus ones (and how do you get them back in place during unshrinking, should you plan to do that)? Second, you can't pick every n-th molecule to keep and run with it, the whole shrinking would basically mean a complete re-engineering of the whole body to work at the smaller size. We know that smaller life is possible, because it exists, but it is unclear to me, how small can we go while keeping the overall structure and function human-like. Our brain is pretty big and its size is a big issue in energy consumption, yet evolution thought it is a good idea to make it big - how much can we shrink it while retaining intelligence? Sure, there are people twice smaller than myself in volume, so some room exists But "tiny people" shrinks (like milimeter-scale) are probably out of question not only because of the brain but because you wouldn't be able to physically fit in a working digestive and circulatory system, just because you can't really shrink the cells (because of molecule sizes) and you just wouldn't fit enough different cells in the place to make it work.

That's pretty sad, because at those scales, you get all these interesting things (that are usually just glossed over), such as the surface tension making you unable to drink and microorganisms being physically threatening, but that's probably not gonna happen, because you'd be dead a long time before it from simply not having a working biology ...


Mhmmm. So if we can have the magic of a shrink ray, why can't we have the magic of shrunk atoms? If we posit magic in the first place, then we can posit magic to make the changed situation work. There is a magic universe of small atoms, and all the shrink ray does is convert your big atoms into small ones. If it is gradual then you can choose the atom size on a dial. And don't give me no fundamental laws of physics prohibiting that. We just posited that the world is magic. As long as it's still internally consistent, then it's fine.

Or do you read Harry Potter and complain that it's not realistic? Note that Harry Potter is not the best example, because it is textbook "because magic" trope. Mistborn is probably the best recent (popular) example of an internally consistent magical world, but it's a lot less well known.


Well "because magic" solves everything, right? But if we aim for some consistency, then, as I said, the main issue is the interaction with real-size atoms. Your whole body is built upon a delicate balance of chemical reactions. Let's imagine that being "magically" shrunk by shrink each atom. Then you still need to breathe and eat and real-size atoms just aren't gonna play along very well with this. Essentially to shrink the atom you need to change mass and charge of all elementary particles and then within themselves, they would work fine, but normal atoms would be very exotic and probably terribly poisonous substances to them.

Now the big question is, what changes you would actually make to make this work? Naively, one would just cut a piece out of every elementary particle - but that would actually have the opposite effect, because quantum mechanics is silly and lighter particles have larger wavelengths. As your size is determined by atomic/molecular forces, not nuclear ones, it could actually work to mess only with electrons and you would just need to make them heavier for everything to shrink. But then suddenly all energy scales would go way up, all the chemistry in you would both require and produce much more heat - this would mean that the world around you would suddenly be freezing cold and I am not even sure at what scale it would become physically unfeasible to energetically sustain basic metabolism because of the sheer volume of food that you'd need to consume to stay barely alive.


You see, you're still trapped in your non-magical world where shrink rays don't exist. It's like watching the Iron Man movies and complaining that the Arc reactor has to be breaking the laws of thermodynamics. Yes, but so what?
xM(Z
Profile Joined November 2006
Romania5299 Posts
November 28 2016 12:25 GMT
#10653
you dudes got it all wrong. you don't shrink the atoms, you just make him small/little discarding the extra molecules.
intelligence is a brain mass to body mass ratio so it doesn't matter how much you shrink it if you use/keep the initial proportions.
And my fury stands ready. I bring all your plans to nought. My bleak heart beats steady. 'Tis you whom I have sought.
Dan HH
Profile Joined July 2012
Romania9208 Posts
November 28 2016 13:04 GMT
#10654
On November 28 2016 21:25 xM(Z wrote:
you dudes got it all wrong. you don't shrink the atoms, you just make him small/little discarding the extra molecules.
intelligence is a brain mass to body mass ratio so it doesn't matter how much you shrink it if you use/keep the initial proportions.

Is that why we live in a midgetocracy where dwarfs are all geniuses compared to regular sized people?
xM(Z
Profile Joined November 2006
Romania5299 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-11-28 13:28:49
November 28 2016 13:18 GMT
#10655
i don't think you know what ratio means here.
6/24=0.25
3/12=0.25
= keeping the same ratio but decreasing the size
= the 6/24 is as smart as 3/12

Edit: maybe i should've said keep the initial ratios but i mean ... come on, it's implied
And my fury stands ready. I bring all your plans to nought. My bleak heart beats steady. 'Tis you whom I have sought.
Simberto
Profile Blog Joined July 2010
Germany11839 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-11-28 13:47:31
November 28 2016 13:26 GMT
#10656
On November 28 2016 20:59 Acrofales wrote:
Show nested quote +
On November 28 2016 20:20 opisska wrote:
On November 28 2016 19:46 Acrofales wrote:
On November 28 2016 19:20 opisska wrote:
On November 28 2016 18:58 Cascade wrote:
On November 27 2016 12:55 Epishade wrote:
In the episode where Spongebob gets the shrink ray, he accidentally shrinks everybody in Bikini Bottom and they all get mad at him and start beating him up for being shrunk. To remedy this problem, he shrinks Bikini Bottom too, so that everybody is able to live as they did before, with everything at the same relative size. Assuming they had no outside contact and were isolationist, would they run into any problems, or was this an effective solution?

Changing size of animals suffer from the square-cube law: en.wikipedia.org. Specially, our muscles act through electromagnetism which essentially scale with the square of the size, while gravity and inertia scales with the cube. This presents a large problem for scaling up the size of land animals, which is the parade example of the square cube principle. However, it is not as clean in aquatic animals (as mentioned in wiki), and even less so when it comes to shrinking an animal (not mentioned).

So would they notice? Yes, no doubt. Even ignoring the rest of the world sudenly going 2x as big, everyone would be twice as strong when it comes to interacting with other things also scaled down 50%. They'd notice immediately.

Would they survive? Not sure. I'd guess that the internal organs of most animals wouldn't survive a factor 2 increase in muscle compared inertia. How would the now too-strong heart cope? Digestion? Breathing? No idea. So well, I can't immediately point out something that'd kill them, but making a guess, I think there will be something internal that would be messed up.


I have seen several shrinking-themed stories and I always wandered, how is the shrinking even done at the molecular level? You can't realistically shrink atoms - even if you somehow created a matter for which atomic distances are indeed shrunk, you constantly exchange matter with your surroundings and that would blow you up pretty fast, not to mention that interactions between small and big atoms would probably be pretty funky in the first place - unless you had a tank with shrunk-oxygen, you'd suffocate instantly I guess.

Thus you need to make everything smaller using normal biomolecules. First, where do you put the surplus ones (and how do you get them back in place during unshrinking, should you plan to do that)? Second, you can't pick every n-th molecule to keep and run with it, the whole shrinking would basically mean a complete re-engineering of the whole body to work at the smaller size. We know that smaller life is possible, because it exists, but it is unclear to me, how small can we go while keeping the overall structure and function human-like. Our brain is pretty big and its size is a big issue in energy consumption, yet evolution thought it is a good idea to make it big - how much can we shrink it while retaining intelligence? Sure, there are people twice smaller than myself in volume, so some room exists But "tiny people" shrinks (like milimeter-scale) are probably out of question not only because of the brain but because you wouldn't be able to physically fit in a working digestive and circulatory system, just because you can't really shrink the cells (because of molecule sizes) and you just wouldn't fit enough different cells in the place to make it work.

That's pretty sad, because at those scales, you get all these interesting things (that are usually just glossed over), such as the surface tension making you unable to drink and microorganisms being physically threatening, but that's probably not gonna happen, because you'd be dead a long time before it from simply not having a working biology ...


Mhmmm. So if we can have the magic of a shrink ray, why can't we have the magic of shrunk atoms? If we posit magic in the first place, then we can posit magic to make the changed situation work. There is a magic universe of small atoms, and all the shrink ray does is convert your big atoms into small ones. If it is gradual then you can choose the atom size on a dial. And don't give me no fundamental laws of physics prohibiting that. We just posited that the world is magic. As long as it's still internally consistent, then it's fine.

Or do you read Harry Potter and complain that it's not realistic? Note that Harry Potter is not the best example, because it is textbook "because magic" trope. Mistborn is probably the best recent (popular) example of an internally consistent magical world, but it's a lot less well known.


Well "because magic" solves everything, right? But if we aim for some consistency, then, as I said, the main issue is the interaction with real-size atoms. Your whole body is built upon a delicate balance of chemical reactions. Let's imagine that being "magically" shrunk by shrink each atom. Then you still need to breathe and eat and real-size atoms just aren't gonna play along very well with this. Essentially to shrink the atom you need to change mass and charge of all elementary particles and then within themselves, they would work fine, but normal atoms would be very exotic and probably terribly poisonous substances to them.

Now the big question is, what changes you would actually make to make this work? Naively, one would just cut a piece out of every elementary particle - but that would actually have the opposite effect, because quantum mechanics is silly and lighter particles have larger wavelengths. As your size is determined by atomic/molecular forces, not nuclear ones, it could actually work to mess only with electrons and you would just need to make them heavier for everything to shrink. But then suddenly all energy scales would go way up, all the chemistry in you would both require and produce much more heat - this would mean that the world around you would suddenly be freezing cold and I am not even sure at what scale it would become physically unfeasible to energetically sustain basic metabolism because of the sheer volume of food that you'd need to consume to stay barely alive.


You see, you're still trapped in your non-magical world where shrink rays don't exist. It's like watching the Iron Man movies and complaining that the Arc reactor has to be breaking the laws of thermodynamics. Yes, but so what?


The problem here is that "because magic" is fine if it is used to set up an interesting world with consistent rules. Using "because magic" to solve problems makes stories boring.

If the question is "Does shrinking everything lead to problems?", the answer "no, because magic makes all the problems go away" is both uncreative and boring. Obviously it works, if your assumption is "magic solves all the problems". That does not change the fact that it is boring. Thus, you need to make some assumptions and build a logical framework for that question to actually work in a way that is interesting.

You can answer any question and solve any problem in speculative fiction with "because magic" or "because sufficiently advanced technology". Those stories are very uninteresting to t. For a story to be interesting, you need rules with regards to how magic/tech works if it is a major plotpoint. That is also the reason why Gandalf doesn't just magic the one ring to mount doom. Gandalfs magic does not follow rules, and thus it is not able to solve problems.

On November 28 2016 22:18 xM(Z wrote:
i don't think you know what ratio means here.
6/24=0.25
3/12=0.25
= keeping the same ratio but decreasing the size
= the 6/24 is as smart as 3/12

Edit: maybe i should've said keep the initial ratio but i mean ... come on, it's implied

And midgets have a comparatively larger brain to rest of body ratio. Thus, by your theory that this ratio is the important thing, that would mean that midgets are on average a lot more intelligent than non-midget, and we should be living in a midgetocracy.
opisska
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
Poland8852 Posts
November 28 2016 13:30 GMT
#10657
Are you aware that the mice have the same brain to body ratio as humans? It works only as a very rough estimate and doesn't lend itself well to extrapolation to extreme values.

I have already addressed the "extra molecules" problem, it works only so far, in particular with the brain, because human brain is extremely complex and this complexity is inevitably reduced by discarding molecules, because a lot of the molecules are, you know, actually useful. Again, do you really think that if the same effect could be done with a significantly smaller brain, that the evolution would have chosen the big one, despite it's huge drawbacks in energy consumption?
"Jeez, that's far from ideal." - Serral, the king of mild trashtalk
TL+ Member
xM(Z
Profile Joined November 2006
Romania5299 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-11-28 13:34:20
November 28 2016 13:31 GMT
#10658
that has nothing to do with Bikini Bottom(the midgetocracy; you're changing the context there) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain-to-body_mass_ratio is way better than your magic.
And my fury stands ready. I bring all your plans to nought. My bleak heart beats steady. 'Tis you whom I have sought.
xM(Z
Profile Joined November 2006
Romania5299 Posts
Last Edited: 2016-11-28 13:55:49
November 28 2016 13:36 GMT
#10659
On November 28 2016 22:30 opisska wrote:
Are you aware that the mice have the same brain to body ratio as humans? It works only as a very rough estimate and doesn't lend itself well to extrapolation to extreme values.

I have already addressed the "extra molecules" problem, it works only so far, in particular with the brain, because human brain is extremely complex and this complexity is inevitably reduced by discarding molecules, because a lot of the molecules are, you know, actually useful. Again, do you really think that if the same effect could be done with a significantly smaller brain, that the evolution would have chosen the big one, despite it's huge drawbacks in energy consumption?
the question, when issued, had a fixed minimum size in mind(=as portrayed in the cartoon); it didn't go to infinity and beyond.

the later part could be argued upon but it would be guess work
(and yea, mice are brilliant).
And my fury stands ready. I bring all your plans to nought. My bleak heart beats steady. 'Tis you whom I have sought.
Dan HH
Profile Joined July 2012
Romania9208 Posts
November 28 2016 13:43 GMT
#10660
On November 28 2016 22:18 xM(Z wrote:
i don't think you know what ratio means here.
6/24=0.25
3/12=0.25
= keeping the same ratio but decreasing the size
= the 6/24 is as smart as 3/12

Edit: maybe i should've said keep the initial ratio but i mean ... come on, it's implied

My point was that their brain is not proportionally smaller as is their body, it's not the same ratio as a regular sized person, it's more like 7/24 and 3/12 in your example. And it was a joke, a reductio ad absurdum for the highly inaccurate and oversimplified theory of brain-to-body mass ratio which I had no intention of seriously arguing about.

I hope I'll live to see the day when I can reply to you without having to dissect it afterwards, because it's getting old to have to explain every word. The obvious solution would be to not reply but I keep forgetting that.
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