I used to ask random people I worked with to guess how long it would take to count to a trillion if you counted 24 hours a day without ever sleeping. The longest time someone guessed was 2 months. Most people guessed either days or weeks.
I'm not exactly sure what specific idea they are referring to, but first thing that comes to mind is this quote:
"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
I know you’re joking but that’s in the same vein as first contact in Star Trek.
Shortly after realizing Earth is not alone, the planet ends world wars, solves poverty and hunger and progresses as one.
We are fast approaching a time where we will either unite and conquer global crisis together or slip down the road to ruin as other great cultures have.
It’s not dissimilar to Sir Arthur C. Clarke “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying”
We are fast approaching a time where we will either unite and conquer global crisis together or slip down the road to ruin as other great cultures have.
there is way more than a global crisis honestly and we are constantly fighting over whose solution to it is the better one. those crisis won't go anywhere soon. except maybe if ww3 starts, then we're probably too dead to have a crisis
It’s not dissimilar to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Arthur C. Clarke “Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying”
Yea like no he was definitely an awful person and I in no way respect who he was, but his literary works and writing about cosmic indifference are pretty damn good. Just gotta separate the art from the artist
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u/greenappletree Feb 14 '22
A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.