• Barbecue Cowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    75·
    6 days ago

    I know it’s the point of the meme, but converting ‘Eiffel Towers’ into a unit of measure that can hold text, images and video… My brain is just stuck on it.

        • snoons@lemmy.caEnglish
          111·
          6 days ago

          That’s probably what it is. That’s usually what cops (ACAB) mean when they say stuff like ten gajillion images.

        • Berengaria_of_Navarre@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          6 days ago

          Back in the early 90s tv Presenters and teachers used to talk about computer discs in terms of how many phone books you could store on them.

          For example: “This “multimedia pc” has a massive 340 mb hard drive, which can hold as much information as 500 phone books!”

          It’s probably an attempt to do something similar.

  • Signtist@bookwyr.meEnglish
    24·
    6 days ago

    I honestly like converting units of measurement into something immediately and viscerally understandable in situations like these. Like, yeah, I can understand that 2100 feet or 650 meters worth of paper is a lot, but that’s all I think about it; it’s big enough that I just default to the general “a lot” in my head. But when you say 2 Eiffel Towers, I immediately picture myself looking up at the Eiffel Tower with 2 huge stacks of paper towering next to it, which makes me feel very different about the amount of pages.

    • Fleur_@aussie.zoneEnglish
      7·
      5 days ago

      I am far more familiar with what a gigabyte of information is than what an Eiffel tower of information is

      • Signtist@bookwyr.meEnglish
        2·
        5 days ago

        Technically I am too, but a gigabyte isn’t something I can truly visualize. Again, it just turns into “wow, that’s a lot,” which is something I say so often about so many things that it loses all meaning. I’d say “wow, that’s a lot” about a gigabyte of Epstein files, and I’d say “wow, that’s a lot” about a petabyte of Epstein files, but when I can visualize the size against something like the Eiffel Tower that I can actually see in my mind, it keeps my brain from automatically filing it into the “wow, that’s a lot” bucket, and I can truly get a relative grasp of the scale.

        • Fleur_@aussie.zoneEnglish
          1·
          5 days ago

          This personally has never been how I process information. I find it far easier to rationalise distinct units compared to relative things. The one that stands out to me the most is the whole “one million seconds is 11 days but 1 billion seconds is 31 years.” I see posts like this pop up every now and then usually with the point of highlighting the difference between millionaires and billionaires. To me it only serves to obfuscate 1 billion being 1000 times more than 1 million. In the analogy it became, 11 days times 1000 is now 11 000 days divided by 365.

          • Signtist@bookwyr.meEnglish
            1·
            5 days ago

            That’s really interesting. I’ve often used that exact example to re-contextualize the difference between million and billion to people, since while most understand conceptually that one is 1000x bigger than the other, they fail to truly understand just how big that difference is.

            One person explained to me that they understood that 1000x was the difference between $1 and $1000, but that didn’t feel like that huge of a difference, since their monthly bills were significantly above both numbers. So, they applied that same feeling to the difference between $1 million and $1 billion, making them feel like it wasn’t that big of a difference there, either. This was despite the fact that they had a college degree and could obviously do basic math; they simply didn’t think about it enough, instead using the “feeling” of what 1000x meant to smaller numbers to judge the size of larger numbers, significantly skewing their understanding.

            That’s the issue with most people’s brains, though it seems you’re immune - we can understand the logic of the scenario, but unless we also think about it enough to get past the instinctive “feeling” of that difference, which requires more thought than we usually give to a scenario, we won’t really understand how big it is. To people stuck in that window, re-contextualization to things like time and size that they understand more intuitively can really help them see how far off their understanding is.

            I believe it’s also related to how some people can understand that they’re more likely to lose a bet than win it, but still gamble over and over because they “feel” like they’re going to win this time.

    • MyNameIsIgglePiggle@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      8·
      6 days ago

      How did pam bondi even fit that on her desk?

      And then how did it accidentally go missing making people think that they never existed?

      “What’s that two Eiffel towers worth of paper doing on your front lawn?”

      “I don’t know, I don’t see anything”

  • kn0wmad1c@programming.devEnglish
    5·
    6 days ago

    You Europes measure car performance by comparing it to horses just like the rest of us. Don’t get all high and mighty now.

    • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
      11·
      6 days ago

      My car’s papers all say “kW”… must be the alternative spelling “korseWower”

  • magnetosphere@fedia.io
    11·
    6 days ago

    While I agree with the point this joke is making, I’m SOOOOOO tired of it. Does oop constantly do Borat impressions, too?