• Krem [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 month ago

    i think math education in a lot of places just failed to educate kids on understanding scales of things. like, 10x bigger is possible. 100x is very difficult. 1000x is almost impossible. this is probably one key reason why some working class people defend billionaires, they conceptualize them as being something like triple millionaires, and millionaires as being 3-4x as rich as a normal person

    • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      1 month ago

      what’s the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? about a billion dollars.

      incidentally, same as the difference between you or me and a billionaire

      • Belly_Beanis [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 month ago

        There’s also that example of a football field representing dinosaur extinction to the present (65 million years). Humans show up all the way at the 100 yard line, then inches and quarter inches is where we discover things like writing or build the first cities. The last 2,000 years is crunched up into millimeters.

      • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 month ago

        Reminds me of a video where some girl is coughing in a bed and the person behind the camera goes “oh my poor baby…” and they turn around to ask “POOR?” and flashes their money (with presumably prop bills)

        ME and a billionaire? money spread

    • agentant [any]@hexbear.net
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      1 month ago

      It’s helpful to use the seconds analogy for helping people conceptualize the difference

      1 million seconds is 11.5 days

      1 billion seconds is 31.5 years

      That puts it in a relative measurement they can perceive