MartinB comments on Scientific Self-Help: The State of Our Knowledge - Less Wrong
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7 billion!
There are facts that basically never change (the diameter of Earth) and there are facts that change fairly fast (the U.S. GDP; the temperature). There are also facts that change slowly enough that we tend to remember the first value we memorized for them (human population). Those last two sentences are an attempted summary of an article or blog post that I once read but can no longer find. Does this ring a bell for anyone?
Yes. Its annoying if you base your habits around it. My grandmother had it cached how distance calls are super expensive. But in the last decade all land-line calls in Germany became either cheap, or flat feed. She would still cut them short.
Having the wrong number for the world population is probably not a problem.