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One thing that I have accepted in this lifetime is that there are infinite things I won’t ever understand. I can’t wrap my head around how humans created such ornate buildings hundreds of years ago, and I’ll never fully grasp how the internet works. I cannot fathom the fact that our galaxy contains billions of other planets, because honestly, even my smartphone blows my mind.

We are lucky to live in an age where we have so many more answers than we did a few centuries ago, but that doesn’t mean our brains can fully comprehend it all. Redditors have recently been discussing concepts that they’ll never quite grasp, despite how many times they’ve been explained, so we’ve gathered some of their thoughts below. Enjoy scrolling through these topics that might be beyond your realm of comprehension too, and be sure to upvote the ones you'd like to understand!

#2

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp How Trump can still be allowed to run for President.
Any regular guy saying the things he constantly says in any post, podcast or YouTube video and the guy would be cancelled instantly. Old orange full of money says the same things "let's make him President again!" I guess? I am not sure I will ever understand.

vksdann , Owen.outdoors/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

#3

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Space, it's so big that it is unfathomable and I think it's expanding?! Into what? How did it start? It's all a mindf**k .

VVinstonVVolfe , Sam Kolder/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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ThatG
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

And it’s expanding at such a rate that the galaxies there at the edge are moving away from us at a rate faster than the speed, so their light will never ever reach us. The part we can see, is the Observable Universe. Beyond that we’ll never know.

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#4

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Why after thousands of years of history behind us, people still suck. You’d think we’d be improving but no, sometimes it feels like we’re actually getting worse.

foxylady315 , DSD/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Skara Brae
Community Member
3 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Think of it this way: people haven't changed much, but culture has mostly improved. For example, many places in the world had little or no police (or equivalent) that protected regular citizens. Often, soldiers in wars were not supplied with food, so the soldiers would steal food from local citizens, sometimes injuring or killing those citizens as well. Nobody in power cared. As another example, at the end of many, MANY, wars in some parts of the world, the winners would either kill their opponents or sell them as slaves. It didn't matter which religion the victors claimed to follow, they all behaved this way. The conflicts between modern Israel, Palestinians and Lebanon would be fundamentally different today if the founding of Israel included selling the Palestinians into slavery or killing them. So, as bad as the situation there has been and is today, at least far more people survived than would have in previous centuries. Culture is improving, but it doesn't have a solution for everything.

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#5

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp I'll go, for me it's the whole transformation from caterpillars to butterflies. I understand what they DO but it's the most alien s**t ever that a worm just decides to rearrange itself into a winged creature that looks nothing like it did before.

n0dust0llens , Pixabay/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Jill Rhodry
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's even more bizarre than that - between caterpillar and butterfly stage is mush, it digests itself!

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#6

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp How some people can have no inner dialogue. And how can those people have thoughts or ideas? I don’t get it.

babyallenbunch , SHVETS production/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

#7

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp My health insurance

You mean I have to pay every time I use it even though I pay monthly? Unless I pay a big amount then I pay less? But if I don’t use it they just keep it all? But they don’t cover my teeth or my eyes?

DrPeterVankman , Pixabay/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Biytemii
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Omg this...I just started paying for my own insurance when I got married. Was on state insurance for a long long time and they pay for most anything. Now I'm getting bills that are higher than my 600 dollar monthly cost ( that's for me and my husband) I don't fcking get it and I'm losing it

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#8

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Quantum mechanics. No matter how many times it's explained, the idea that particles can exist in multiple states at once or influence each other instantaneously across vast distances just feels like nature's most elaborate inside joke that I'm not quite in on.

jane66x , Transocean Berlin Report

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Libstak
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I understand it when it is being explained but it is so crazy I can't hold the knowledge in any practical way and need to hear it again and again just to understand it for that microsecond.

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#9

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp How a basic wax record and player works. I get it’s a grove that is tiny hills and valleys and the needle picks up on each little one but how the f**k does that equal a voice coming out of a large metal tube. It’s witchcraft as far as im concerned.

-invalid-user-name- , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wtifAGsV3k/Youtube (not the actual photo) Report

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Skara Brae
Community Member
3 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At the most basic, the wiggly grooves in the recording move past the needle fast enough that you can hear the vibrations of whatever is attached to the needle, as long as it is rigid. It's not loud if you just use the needle. Attach the metal cone to the needle and the vibrations are enough to make the cone vibrate, which is loud enough to hear. This video link below shows someone playing a record with just a plastic 5 pound note. The groove makes the corner of the plastic note vibrate, and the plastic note is stiff enough that you can hear it vibrate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUlu-XjCgtk

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#10

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp The electoral college. No matter how it’s explained to me, it will never make sense to me that we award arbitrary points to states over going what the majority of voters want.

shbeesh , Edmond Dantès/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Slapdash1
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That system possibly made sense in the 18th century. But, because Americans have this pagan cult of their Founding Fathers, they somehow got stuck with it because clearly a bunch of slave-owning rich people from 250 years ago figured out EVERYTHING. So there.

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#12

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp How my pet seems to know when I’m sad and tries to comfort me.

Young_lovey18 , Oleksandr P/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Guess Undheit
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

You're assuming animals don't have emotions and can't feel empathy? Have you never seen a huge dog and a tiny kitten get along, the dog NOT ripping the kitten to pieces?

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#13

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp How airplanes can be so big and heavy and fly.

TangyCornIceCream , Pixabay/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Papa
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I get OP's point. I understand the science behind it, but intuitively it seems like it shouldn't work.

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#14

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp How a chicken can make a whole egg everyday! I’m always just blown away

Everyday. A whole new egg. And sometimes two a day! Why is this not talked about more?! Lol.

jennylouwoo , TIVASEE/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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BM Khalid Hasan
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I ate a lot of organically breeder chickens in my village in childhood. After cutting, I noticed their stomach was full of eggs. They were of different sizes at different growth rates.

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#15

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp So many things & all these answers are just adding more to the list 😂.

Brains are insane to me...like every human is virtually made of the same things, we all have a brain etc, but everyone's brain is so ridiculously different from others & then when you bring in things like mental illness / dementia- why do some brains go through that and others don't? Why isn't there a better way to help/ reverse/ stop progression.

New_Chard9548 , MART PRODUCTION/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Libstak
Community Member
3 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Environmental impact has a huge role I think, 8 billion brains in 8 billion different and unique to them environments across a whole planet, everything from what's in the food and water, atmospheric difference such as altitude, social interactions, relating to the world in their little corner all firing neurons and creating pathways as unique as a fingerprint.

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#16

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp How my cat always knows exactly when I’m about to sit down with a snack.

Gracelovey12 , Cats Coming/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

#19

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp I'm a classically trained singer and will never understand how I can think of a certain pitch and then recreate it accurately.

gris_lightning , cottonbro studio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

#20

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp How NFTs work. Even Futurama couldn’t help me understand.

Equizotic , HULU Report

#21

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp How when I'm playing an FPS game in Europe and aiming my gun at another players head who's in the US and pulling the trigger, electrical impulses are (roughly speaking) sent from my mouse to my computers motherboard to its CPU which makes the decision to forward it to my network card which sends it to my router to my 5G antenna, then through the air to a recieving cell phone tower a mile down the road, then down into the ground through cables again (I'm assuming) through the entire country to some major European backbone hub, then down into deep sea cables under the entire f*****g Atlantic ocean, through the same whole bunch of cables and switches and relay stations through HIS country as well and finally into his computer where he dies from the bullet a FRACTION OF A SECOND later.

And then we all complain about the lag and the high pings because the internet is just so f*****g slow today.

But anyway it's not so much that I don't understand how this all works technically, I do but I just can't wrap my head around how the information is able to travel as fast as it does for as far as it does. It's not just the distance itself but also just the sheer amount of devices and things the data packets have to enter and exit on the way, with computer chips running software making logical decisions on how to recieve it, analyse it and send it on its way again over and over and over again. And all of this doesn't even take a single second from start to end. Not even half of one.

I dunno it's just mindboggling to me.

FoilHattiest , gameranx Report

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Guess Undheit
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Electricity travels at the speed of light, about 300,000km/second. From Europe to the US is about 10,000km. That means information (if there were no resistance) could travel there and back fifteen times in a second. Even with delays and laggy lines, that distance takes less than one tenth of a second. That's faster than you can blink.

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#22

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Mattress and furniture stores. They gotta be fronts for money laundering, right?

brianeharmonjr , Pixabay/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

#23

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Computer!! You take the rock!! You pound it into metal ore or something!! You put the metal together with some stringy bits of copper or idk whatever goes into circuits!! You run electricity through it!! It does math??? It's a rock!! How it does math?!?!?!?? 


 Edit: if I had a 1 and a 0 for everyone who has explained computers to me based on this post I could build MULTIVAC.

LadyCordeliaStuart , Brianna Laugher/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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Skara Brae
Community Member
3 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

To pick a much simpler example, a cake would seem magical to someone who just looked at the ingredients. The wrong ingredients or the wrong amounts would produce something that isn't cake. Edit: Regarding the comment in the original post "It does math??": The math part is actually a separate topic than the electrical part of computers. Computers are designed to use electricity to operate special circuits that enable the use of digital logic (Boolean logic). Logic circuits, when designed sufficiently (and rather complexly), enable math calculations. You could use something else besides computers and electricity to do Boolean logic and math calculations. For example, it's possible to design a complex network of pipes and valves powered by a waterfall to perform math calculations. It's just enormously easier, cheaper, and more flexible to use computers.

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#24

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Quantum physics always feels like someone’s trying to explain magic with a lot of big words.

MysticLuxce33 , JESHOOTS.com/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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WindySwede
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Sometimes I think I understand it, sometimes not at all. But most parts I'm just superpositioned about it.. 🤷‍♂️

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#25

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp That scene from Interstellar when they go to the planet for a bit, then get back to the ship and the dudes many years older. Why time passes quicker in different places in space.

random5654 , paramountpictures Report

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Ace
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It doesn't. Firstly it's not about different places, but different speeds, but for any individual time passes just the same as it does for any other. It's only in the theoretical case where someone's travelled close to the speed of light relative to another person and then returned to meet them that we notice a difference, but each person's time has passed no more quickly than the other's.

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#26

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp The internet. WHERE IS IT? How can things be stored on something that's not tangible?

babygrlnad , picjumbo.com/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Skara Brae
Community Member
3 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The internet is just a huge network of connections between computers. Web pages and photos and all that stuff are stored in the computers, not the connections between the computers. If you unplug the internet from all of the computers, the stored information doesn't disappear, you just can't access the information anymore. Edit: By the way, the "Cloud" is just a marketing term for companies that set up a bunch of computers to perform the same things, using additional software that coordinates the computers to work together better, like storing photos and playing back videos. If 1000 people are watching the same video, they are likely receiving the video data from multiple computers, not just one computer, because it's easier and cheaper to design the service that way, and the service responds to commands faster. The software coordinating the computers decides which computer feeds the video data to each viewer, depending on how busy each cloud computer is. It's a lot like when people want to buy movie or sports tickets: One ticket booth is too slow for handling a lot of customers.

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#27

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Peoples behaviour.

CASHOWL , Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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BM Khalid Hasan
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's totally random after birth! Some get influenced by their surroundings, but I don't think you can teach everyone. It's just random choice that you would be good or bad.

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#28

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Black holes. Space in general, but black holes really get to me. So strong that light and other stars/planets can’t escape it? Where does it all go?!!

parkbench23 , Olga Lioncat/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Guess Undheit
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The diametre of a hydrogen atom 1.06 × 10^(−10)m, and the distance between the proton and the electron is 5.3x10^(-11)m. The diametre of a proton is 1.7×10^(−15)m, and the diametre of an electron is 1.0x10^(-14). That means an electron is 1/10,000 the size of a hydrogen atom, the rest of it is empty space. In one cubic metre of air, there are 2.70×10^25 atoms of hydrogen, so if you compressed all that one cubic metre of air via gravity, it would be smaller than one cubic millimetre. Even a cubic metre of iron would compress to less than a cubic millimetre if all the space were removed. It's the electromagnetic resistance that keeps atoms apart - remember, gravity is a WEAK force, not a strong one (e.g. magnets can defeat gravity), so black holes are incredibly dense gravity wells. A black hole weighing the same as the Sun would a ball only three kilometres across.

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#29

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp I don't understand color. I think it's something about how the color we see is the color that wasn't absorbed and therefore the one reflected into our eyeballs, but I just don't really get it.

_exposure , Steve Johnson/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

#30

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp I don’t get how cell phones work. I get it. I don’t. How can I speak to my family in the Middle East on FaceTime without any sort of cords. My mind cannot fathom



Update: wow I thought waking up this morning I’d just put on my scrubs and it would be another day on the psych ward.

Just wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you for providing so many amazing explanations. For not being rude, or trolls or making me feel dumb about this. I had an old account I had to get rid of, I have been on Reddit for nearly 10 years. This is the most positive experience I’ve ever had. Thank you!

Ola_maluhia , Lisa Fotios/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Manana Man
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's like that expression you've probably heard: any sufficiently advanced technology will seem like magic to those who see it the first time. All the wireless technology of recent years fits that idea very well.

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#32

Why people and animals know when someone is watching them.

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#33

Crypto mining.

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Libstak
Community Member
3 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Yes, what the actual? And it requires ridiculous levels of microprocessors over significant time, what, how....? I mean huge warehouses full of equipment for something that is manifestly immaterial?

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#34

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp That the speed of light cannot be exceeded.

It is a finite speed, and yet nothing can go faster than that...

Sprzout , Mateusz Dach/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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ColdSteelRonin
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

An Italian experiment has unveiled evidence that fundamental particles known as neutrinos can travel faster than light. Other researchers are cautious about the result, but if it stands further scrutiny, the finding would overturn the most fundamental rule of modern physics—that nothing travels faster than 299,792,458 meters per second. The 1,800-tonne OPERA detector is a complex array of electronics and photographic emulsion plates, but the new result is simple—the neutrinos are arriving 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light allows. "We are shocked," says Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern in Switzerland and OPERA's spokesman. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/particles-found-to-travel/

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#35

How a human 3-D prints another human in their abdomen, without any conscious effort. I understand the science. I still think it sounds made up.

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#36

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Magnets.

I’ve decided that they’re magic, and that’s all there is to it.

(A few hours after posting the above):

Edit 1: I didn’t mean I believe in magic *literally*, jeez. It’s called hyperbole. Holy c**p, people.

Edit 2: Thank you, brainy people, for trying to explain it. You all failed, but I appreciate the attempt and love you for it.

(A day later…)

Edit 3: I had to google what all the ICP comments meant because I’m musically unhip. In other news, I’ve been listening to a new-to-me band today, so thanks, music-y people!

Galliagamer , Sheila Sund/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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WubiDubi
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's some comfort that with iron filings you can see the fields, it helps a little. It is amazing, inducing it.

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#38

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp **The stock market**.

How can it be possible for the value of an item to change so drastically? I understand supply and demand, but the large flunctuations are amazing.

britishmetric144 , Anna Nekrashevich/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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Gustav Gallifrey
Community Member
3 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

OP better not find out about the futures market, where a lot of people bet a lot of other people's money on the future values of things which do not exist, have never yet existed, and may never actually exist.

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#39

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Which way is East, North, South and West. My husband used to try and teach me by turning my body and asking what direction is this? I was like, how the f**k do I know???

So, I've always relied on "Ok, is that a left or a right hand turn?".

Honey_Bellee , Daniel Maforte/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

#40

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp I don’t understand how we can see the Milky Way Galaxy in one spot in the sky. Why wouldn’t it completely surround us?

raymond_noodles , Jacub Gomez/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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BatPhace
Community Member
3 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The stars we see around us IS the milky way. At least some of them. We're on one arm of it. What we see from earth is the rest of it. Yeah, it's that big.

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#41

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp MRIs, and I have a strong STEM education. They’re essentially magic. I mean I grasp the basic concepts but how you can create a picture from the response of molecular poles being pulsed is like, wild a*s s**t.

SteakandTrach , Charlss GonzHu/Pexels (not the actual photo) Report

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#42

Magnets. Don't understand how they have that physical force locked up in them. Seems to break the laws of physics or something. I don't trust them.

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#43

Daylight Saving Time.

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Papa
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I understand the concept. I just don't understand why we don't stop doing it.

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#44

Solving equations using matrices. I can do other math, I don't like it and it makes my brain hurt, but I can do it. I tried SO hard to get past this part of Algebra 2, for multiple YEARS, and continually failed, to the point I gave up on college because I needed that math credit to graduate. I had 3 teachers, 2 tutors, a friend who used to tutor, and a loved one who was a high level software and hardware engineer, ALL try to help me through it. I'd get through the one problem they walked me through, and fail as soon as they had me try on my own. I never want to see another matrix. Except the movie series.

ETA: Guys. I appreciate the sentiment, but if the list of people who tried to help me didn't make it clear, you're not going to be able to solve this for me over Reddit. I don't need to solve equations with matrices to do anything in my life until/unless I try college again.

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Guess Undheit
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Matrix mathematics are a HUGE PITA (having done it in college), but it's absolutely necessary for many applications. GPS and air traffic control? Yup. Computer graphics and rendering polygons? Check. Systems of equations and statistics? Indeed.

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#45

Maths .

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#46

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. What is? How does it work? Is it real? Where does it come from? Like really, where tf does it come from!? I freak out about when I really try thinking if it. 😂.

Old-Olive13 , osde8info/Flickr (not the actual photo) Report

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Skara Brae
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cell phone signals, and garage door openers all use radio waves. It's the same way an AM or FM radio station transmits radio waves, and you select an AM or FM radio station on your radio. The difference between all of those radio signals is how they choose to transmit information on those radio signals, which is called a protocol. For Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cell phones, each device can both transmit and receive radio signals, but they all have to select which radio signals they use (how they know which to use is part of the protocol design). An analogy is if you walk into a room full of people and different groups of people are talking different languages. You might recognize a language spoken some distance away, even if others closer to you are speaking a language you don't know. Like you, computers can only use the languages (protocols) it knows about, and it ignores the rest.

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#47

The whole cousins x times removed thing. I mean I kind of get second cousin once removed but beyond that it just confuses me. I have no first cousins. God I wish I had the gold star of cousins but I don’t. Instead genealogy websites are always trying to tell me that someone who was 73 when I was 4 is my first cousin but twice removed or some c**p. Hell no my parents were only children. They didn’t have some secret brother who was like 95 years older than them so get outta here with this is your first cousin but…c**p. Also don’t even with the but it’s different generations line of whatever. Why the heck was everyone in my family having kids at the wrong time?

Also does anyone remember that we’re related app Ancestry used to have where it claimed you were related to certain famous people? It told me George Washington is my First Cousin seven times removed. Yeah sure Jan and people don’t understand why I find this confusing. Not like I remember hanging out with him and Tommy Jefferson at the family camping trip.

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Lydsylou (she/her)
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If you share the same grand parents you're first cousins, the same great grandparents you're second cousins, the same great great grandparents makes you third cousins etc

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#48

30 Confounding Mysteries Of Everyday Things That People Just Can’t Grasp I got a bachelor's in physics then worked in a geophysics research group. Did some grad school.


It took me until **30** to understand why it was colder at higher elevation.


Edit: I spent the last three days researching this, and I'm confident enough to say that all of the explanations here and the Google response are in fact **wrong**.


Temperature goes down *exclusively* because gravitational potential energy goes up. That's it. That's the entire ball game -- **energy conservation**.  If you work out the math that's 10 degrees C per km.


The *actual* temperature decrease is 6.5 degrees per KM. This, I believe, is due to energy released by condensation. 


Adiabatic expansion is a *consequence* of all of this stuff, not the *cause*.  The *amount* of pressure and volume is a result of the energy lost to gravitational potential, not the cause of the energy loss.

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Skara Brae
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

While this explanation might be accurate at an abstract level, it ignores things like how sunlight increases surface temperature and the air above the ground, which rises. It also ignores how the temperature simply doesn't uniformly decrease with increasing altitude. See the graph on the right-hand side of the page here: https://www.noaa.gov/jetstream/atmosphere/layers-of-atmosphere

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#49

Automatic transmissions. Those things are so complicated.

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James016
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I’m pretty sure the first auto gearbox I drove with was possessed by the devil.

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#50

Coding.



I work in IT and I absolutely love it. I know it’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life and I’m perfectly cool with that, I love electronics and building pcs and all that.



Maybe someday I’ll dive deeper into it but GOD I cannot wrap my head around coding.

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Nancy Whiting
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I have a job where I occasionally use JSON generation and markdown. I get that it's highly simplified, but it's a good thing I don't have to generate it myself.

g90814
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

same here. I can reverse engineer some code, but it takes a lot of trial and error.

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Ace
Community Member
3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I used to be a programmer, changed software/platform/language several times over the years (decades, actually) so had to adapt to changing technology in that respect, but could never get beyond the most basic understanding of networking and comms, so I guess we all have our stronger and weaker areas.

Corvus
Community Member
3 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Being good with computers doesn't mean you can code... and knowing to code doesn't mean you're good with computers. A lot of people forget this.

Skara Brae
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Imagine a piano that, instead of making an audio note when you press each key, the piano does different things for each key. Suppose this particular piano is designed for making food. You press one key, it measures out some flour. Press the key again and it measures out the same amount of flour again. Press a different key and it puts in some sugar. Another key adds butter, etc. Once you have completed adding your ingredients, you press another key which mixes the ingredients. Another key dumps the ingredients onto a pan, and another key selects an oven temperature, and another bakes your ingredients. The actions you performed on this piano are the same as following a recipe. If you make a machine that presses the keys for you to perform that recipe, that machine acts like a program, and the piano is the computer. The piano/computer is not smart. If your cat walks on the piano, you probably don't get good food. The person who built the machine/program is the only brains in the process.

keyboardtek
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I used to repair electronic digital music keyboards. One customer I had used an 88 note digital piano as a trigger for his subroutines. The digital piano sent out its code in Musical Instrument Digital Information, (MIDI) which has a separate code for each key. That "note on" code would trigger his computer to do a subroutine. I found out that he was one of the people who invented the 3D video software that does the computer generated video we now see everyday.

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Alvia Vseobecna
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

:D what excatly baffles you about it? it's just complicated layers of commands

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#51

Even before Brooklyn 99 this was my answer - the Monty Hall Problem. And I’m actually fairly GOOD at math, this one I just can’t get myself to fundamentally understand!

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#52

Sound. Vinyl records, recordings, phones. I mean, I can kind of get behind vinyl records. That makes the most sense to me but even then, that’s so f*****g intricate with so much variety. So many different songs with the tiniest little ridges that make millions of different results I come out perfectly just by dragging a needle across it. It absolutely blows my mind. But the technological advances of not only recording and playing audio, but also being able to do so in real time? No matter where you are in the world? It f*****g blows my mind like how does that work? How the f**k does talking on the phone work what kind of witchcraft is this.

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TennesseeHomesteadUSA
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2 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Vinyl records are analog sound. Capture sound waves correctly and turn them into mechanical force. That force can be modulated to move a stylus left or right infinitesimally. That movement will 'cut' a blank record into a recording. Let another stylus ("needle) scrape along the groove and the sound plays back. Speakers work both ways -- will capture or transmit sound. But we use filtered microphones to capture sound better than speakers.

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#53

Cribbage. My wife has tried to teach me several times, but to no avail.

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Limey Cheesehead
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's hard trying to find people who can play. I play online against the computer as a substitute.

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#54

Music theory.

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Upstaged75
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I've played the piano since I was 5 years old. I read music and have known all the terms/etc. since I was a kid. Yet when I took music theory in college it kicked my butt! Mostly because a lot of it is like math, which I am terrible at. The circle of fifths nearly killed me. I can play and read music, but I doubt I'd ever be able to write it - my brain just has trouble grasping certain aspects of the theory.

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#55

Taxes.

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Corvus
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It's basically a fee for all the amenities and services the government provides for you - roads, hospitals, schools, etc.

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#56

The triple jump in track and field. Which leg? What jump is next? Which leg now? Argh!

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#57

Rear differentials. I’m fairly convinced there’s just an elf performing magic every time I need to turn. .

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#59

The “cloud “.

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Corvus
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3 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Basically - storage on someone else's computer/server, which is shared. Nothing mysterious about it.

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#60

Affect vs. Effect
Please feel free to try and explain.

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