I really enjoyed the article. A well-written, short introduction and great (as usual) visualisations which will likely see widespread use for conveying the scope of our future.
Personally, I didn’t find the 17m * 4600km beach analogy for 625 quadrillion people super intuitive, and yes, I know, such numbers are basically never intuitive. A framing I found a bit easier to grasp compared the total possible number of humans to seconds in a whole year and said that the number of humans so far equals only a few seconds after midnight on new year or something. But that’s just a tiny personal preference, you probably thought about such analogies a lot more.
Thanks for clearly presenting numbers and topics that are more difficult to convey, it’s great!
I was really struggling to find a way to make this work. I should have asked you earlier! Time could be a very nice way to illustrate that.
It would also work nicely with the metaphor of the earlier illustration in the post, the hour glass.
But I’m not sure it works nicely when I put numbers on it:
1 year are (60*60*24*365)=31,536,000 seconds
The point estimate for this year’s global population is 7,953,952,577
So if 1 person equals 1 second then today’s world population would be 7,953,952,577 /31,536,000=252.2 years.
And 625 quadrillion seconds are 625,000,000,000,000,000⁄31,536,000= 19,818,619,989.9 years. Almost 20 billion years. Way older than the Universe.
The numbers are so large that it is hard to make it work, no?
Making the time unit smaller would be another way to make this work.
Just for the sake of it:
One second is equal to 1,000,000,000 nanoseconds. One billion people are represented by each tick of a second.
So today’s population are 7,953,952,577 /1,000,000,000=7.95 seconds.
1 year are (1,000,000,000*60*60*24*365)=31,536,000,000,000,000 nanoseconds.
This means the future population is represented by 625,000,000,000,000,000⁄31,536,000,000,000,000=19.8 years
So, if we go with the 1 person = 1 nanosecond illustration then today’s world population is represented by 8 seconds and this future population would in contrast be 19.8 years.
That feels definitely more intuitive than the 1person=1second illustration, but it has the downside that no one has an intution of nanoseconds I guess.
–
What do you think? I like your idea of using time, but I find it hard to imagine 20 billion years and I also find it hard to have an intuition of nanoseconds (but maybe 1 billion people=1 second works).
Thanks for the idea! I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but it was fun to explore these numbers in this way.
Do you have another creative idea for how we could make this illustration work?
i think if the comparison you’re interested in is that between today’s population and the future population, it doesn’t really matter whether the thing representing 1 person is intuitive or not, so long as the things representing the two compared populations are intuitive.
Thanks for doing the calculations! I agree, not straightforward. But like Erich said, it was not about representing a single human. It was imagining humanity’s “progress bar” (from first human to final, 600 quadrillionth human in a billion years) as one year. And humanity today being only 8 seconds or so into that year-long progress bar. The idea being that framing progress as seconds in a year is more intuitive than saying 0.0[...]01 %.
You could have a big clock and it could be just after midnight. Then there could be a cut away for the bit just after midnight saying “this is the time of all the humans that have every lived” with it cut up.
THen the rest could be coloured saying “this is all the future time of a conservative estimate of humans to live”.
Something like this, though I think it’s pretty messy. A big clock face for the first hour and then others for the next 23
I really enjoyed the article. A well-written, short introduction and great (as usual) visualisations which will likely see widespread use for conveying the scope of our future.
Personally, I didn’t find the 17m * 4600km beach analogy for 625 quadrillion people super intuitive, and yes, I know, such numbers are basically never intuitive. A framing I found a bit easier to grasp compared the total possible number of humans to seconds in a whole year and said that the number of humans so far equals only a few seconds after midnight on new year or something. But that’s just a tiny personal preference, you probably thought about such analogies a lot more.
Thanks for clearly presenting numbers and topics that are more difficult to convey, it’s great!
I was really struggling to find a way to make this work. I should have asked you earlier! Time could be a very nice way to illustrate that.
It would also work nicely with the metaphor of the earlier illustration in the post, the hour glass.
But I’m not sure it works nicely when I put numbers on it:
1 year are (60*60*24*365)=31,536,000 seconds
The point estimate for this year’s global population is 7,953,952,577
So if 1 person equals 1 second then today’s world population would be 7,953,952,577 /31,536,000=252.2 years.
And 625 quadrillion seconds are 625,000,000,000,000,000⁄31,536,000= 19,818,619,989.9 years. Almost 20 billion years. Way older than the Universe.
The numbers are so large that it is hard to make it work, no?
Making the time unit smaller would be another way to make this work.
Just for the sake of it:
One second is equal to 1,000,000,000 nanoseconds. One billion people are represented by each tick of a second.
So today’s population are 7,953,952,577 /1,000,000,000=7.95 seconds.
1 year are (1,000,000,000*60*60*24*365)=31,536,000,000,000,000 nanoseconds.
This means the future population is represented by 625,000,000,000,000,000⁄31,536,000,000,000,000=19.8 years
So, if we go with the 1 person = 1 nanosecond illustration then today’s world population is represented by 8 seconds and this future population would in contrast be 19.8 years.
That feels definitely more intuitive than the 1person=1second illustration, but it has the downside that no one has an intution of nanoseconds I guess.
–
What do you think? I like your idea of using time, but I find it hard to imagine 20 billion years and I also find it hard to have an intuition of nanoseconds (but maybe 1 billion people=1 second works).
Thanks for the idea! I’m not sure what I’m going to do, but it was fun to explore these numbers in this way.
Do you have another creative idea for how we could make this illustration work?
i think if the comparison you’re interested in is that between today’s population and the future population, it doesn’t really matter whether the thing representing 1 person is intuitive or not, so long as the things representing the two compared populations are intuitive.
Thanks for doing the calculations! I agree, not straightforward. But like Erich said, it was not about representing a single human. It was imagining humanity’s “progress bar” (from first human to final, 600 quadrillionth human in a billion years) as one year. And humanity today being only 8 seconds or so into that year-long progress bar. The idea being that framing progress as seconds in a year is more intuitive than saying 0.0[...]01 %.
You could have a big clock and it could be just after midnight. Then there could be a cut away for the bit just after midnight saying “this is the time of all the humans that have every lived” with it cut up.
THen the rest could be coloured saying “this is all the future time of a conservative estimate of humans to live”.
Something like this, though I think it’s pretty messy. A big clock face for the first hour and then others for the next 23