Understanding Large Numbers
This article from Not-Ship makes plain what I think we all suspect - we are not good at visualizing large numbers.
But we can't continue to suck at this. Our world is increasingly moving towards extreme values: Damages from climate change, deaths due to genocide, wealth that knows no bounds. And we can't tackle them if we can't wrap our heads around the numbers.
The article goes on to convert large numbers into units we can understand better, like time.
| Seconds | Day/year | Roughly |
|---|---|---|
| 1 million | 11.6 days | A vacation |
| 1 billion | 31.7 years | A career |
| 1 trillion | 31,700 years | Longer than human civilization |
The whole thing is worth a read.
Found via Kottke.