I like to think it like this: a million is a decent vacation. A billion is a generation.
this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Dude,.. it's a bit more paradox than usual, BUT I take it!
As a computer guy, just say, what's bigger? A gigabyte or a terabyte? That's the difference between a million and a billion.
For clarity, the scale in difference is the same between a terabyte and a gigabyte as compared to a billion and a million (a factor of 1000). But a gigabyte is not a million bytes and a terabyte is not a billion bytes Kilo = thousand Mega = million Giga = billion Tera = trillion
Gigabyte is a billion bytes, terabyte is a trillion bytes. But yes, relatively speaking, you're correct.
millions = lifetime human income
billions = massive company (top 5,000)
trillions = large government (top 20)
- Read "gov spends millions" as "they employed 3 to 30 people"
- Read "company is fined 1 million" as "the had to hire 2 lawyers instead of 1"
- Read "company is fined 100 million" as "paying ~100 employees for ~10 years"
And in "long scale", a billion is 31 710 years.
It's 1000 times bigger, woah
I think people can't really comprehend this because a long time ago a million was a lot of money. Like, if you had a million in your bank account you were a rich person. Nowadays that means you are just an average person with a little extra money. Heck, in places like San Francisco having a million means you are just scraping by.
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It's 3 more zeroes. It's nothing.
As a retort, why do we need to know this?
innumeracy. "Why would it help to have an intuitive understanding of large quantities? You think it would help grasp situations where they're used or something?"
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I think that this is a pretty bad and deceptive way of demonstrating the size comparison. Mainly because only 60 sec go into 1 minute, not 100. Only 60 min go into 1 hour not 100. Only 24 to a day etc.
Still though I agree thet people have a hard time grasoingbthe difference between millions and billions
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