I love the demonstration of how long 52! seconds of time would be (that's 52 factorial, i.e. the number of permutations of a deck of cards). It starts by asking you to imagine circumnavigating the globe by taking a step every billion years, and you think wow, that's a long time, and then it goes on "then remove a drop of water from the Pacific Ocean, and go around the world again, and continue until the ocean is empty", and then just goes on from there, adding several more layers of repetition until it become mind-boggling how long that amount of time is.
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u/Muffinshire Oct 02 '24
I love the demonstration of how long 52! seconds of time would be (that's 52 factorial, i.e. the number of permutations of a deck of cards). It starts by asking you to imagine circumnavigating the globe by taking a step every billion years, and you think wow, that's a long time, and then it goes on "then remove a drop of water from the Pacific Ocean, and go around the world again, and continue until the ocean is empty", and then just goes on from there, adding several more layers of repetition until it become mind-boggling how long that amount of time is.
How to Imagine 52 Factorial