Science educators continually tell us that distances of millions or billions of miles are incomprehensible by human minds. If that’s true, then a nation of millions or billions of people is even more incomprehensible, and we need to reduce the size of our groups before things will start making sense again.
Science educators continually tell us that distances of millions or billions of miles are incomprehensible by human minds. If that’s true, then a nation of millions or billions of people is even more incomprehensible, and we need to reduce the size of our groups before things will start making sense again.
The example I like for this is the US federal budget.
$5m is about 15 good homes.
$1b is about 3000 good homes.
We don’t deal with things more expensive than a good home. And, 3000 is already a hard number to envision.
$1b is a remarkably hard number to wrap one’s head around.
Right? I just learned the upgrades to the Minuteman nuclear missiles will cost $98.5 billion, out of a $1.5 trillion force modernization package.
If humans can’t understand the scale of the universe, how is anyone supposed to understand the scale of the US budget?
Why does Defense, the largest trillion, not simply eat the other billions?