Understanding large values: It's our ethical duty

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Here's a line from 1,000 to 1 billion. It's a linear scale. Where on this line would you place 1 million?

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Have a guess? A 2013 study asked this of nearly 500 people. Roughly half got it wrong. Honestly, I'm surprised it wasn't higher. Here's where 1 million falls on that line:

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Most of us are terrible at understanding large values. Yet, we encounter these magnitudes frequently in the news: ChatGPT now has 1 billion users; America's national debt is over $39 trillion; Taylor Swift's net worth recently topped $2 billion; and briefly, Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire.

These numbers are so big they're effectively meaningless. Very few of us have real experience with values in the millions, billions or trillions. (If you are an exception, please become a paid subscriber!) We lack an innate understanding of them.

Day-to-day, we deal with small numbers. We're good at small. Picture three rocks in your head. Easy! Now picture 100 rocks... Not so easy. Now a million? Impossible.

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.

Luckily, a bit of perspective can help.

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CONVERT IT

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What time is that number? Let's convert these big values into something we understand better: Time. I think this is one of the clearest ways to understand the extreme differences between million, billion and trillion. Here's what each looks like in seconds.

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Seconds

Day/year

Roughly

1 million

11.6 days

A vacation

1 billion

31.7 years

A career

1 trillion

31,700…