Comment on Why a ton, and not a megagram?

• 13esq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Try it, count grains of sand in your head whilst you picture them. Unless your a savant, it probably starts getting a little blurry around the high teens, maybe a bit higher. You can use tricks like imaging a grid of ten by ten to picture a hundred, but it’ll still be rather blurry. Picturing a million of something is literally impossible, human minds aren’t designed for that.

  If you wanted some sand to line your new brick driveway, would you ask the builders merchant for a few tonnes of sand or a x million grains of sand? It’s the same difference.

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  • XTL@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    By this logic, a millianything is also completely unimaginable, because you can’t count to less than one. BS.

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    • 13esq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s the point, millis and megas make sense for things that aren’t tangible in real life. That’s exactly why we use tons and not megagrams.

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      • Shialac@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        They literally are the same thing. Why would you imagine them differently?

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  • Shialac@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    When I imagine 1km I don’t imagine 1000 individual meters in my head, I imagine 1km

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    • 13esq@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The point is that you can easily estimate a meter.

      Look to the horizon and estimate a kilometre and I’ll bet that your error is significant by comparison to your estimate of a meter.

      There is a big difference between imagining/understanding a concept and judging it accurately in the real world.

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