I'm sorry, but I find this line of argument not very useful. If I remember correctly (which I may not be doing), a googolplex is larger than the estimated number of atoms in the universe. Nobody has any idea of what it implies except "really, really big", so when your concepts get up there, people have to do the math, since the numbers mean nothing. Most of us would agree that having a really really lot of people bothered just a bit is better than having one person suffer for a long life. That has little to do with math and a lot to do with o... (read more)
Nobody has any idea of what it implies except "really, really big", so when your concepts get up there, people have to do the math, since the numbers mean nothing.
This applies just as much to numbers such as million and billion, which people mixes up regularly; the problem though is that people dont do the math, despite not understanding the magnitudes if the numbers, and those numbers of people are actually around.
Personaly, if I first try to visualize a crowd of a hundred people, and then a crowd of a thousand, the second crowd seems about t... (read more)
They've probably already had sex once by then, and thus a fair chance to pass on their genes. Notice that we're not as eager to send 18-year-old women off to war.
I'm sorry, but I find this line of argument not very useful. If I remember correctly (which I may not be doing), a googolplex is larger than the estimated number of atoms in the universe. Nobody has any idea of what it implies except "really, really big", so when your concepts get up there, people have to do the math, since the numbers mean nothing. Most of us would agree that having a really really lot of people bothered just a bit is better than having one person suffer for a long life. That has little to do with math and a lot to do with o... (read more)
This applies just as much to numbers such as million and billion, which people mixes up regularly; the problem though is that people dont do the math, despite not understanding the magnitudes if the numbers, and those numbers of people are actually around.
Personaly, if I first try to visualize a crowd of a hundred people, and then a crowd of a thousand, the second crowd seems about t... (read more)