Comment on What do you think is the largest number a human can actually grasp / truly comprehend?
jerkface@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
Visualization and symbolics are not the only way we comprehend numbers. My mind has the ability to recognize astonishingly broad temporal intervals with remarkable accuracy. I can express the interval using numbers. Does that mean I am able to fully comprehend a number like in “90 minutes?”
I am able to remember sets of things, and distinguish all of the members of that set, up to very large numbers. It would not be unusual for a teacher to be able to call to mind every one of a couple hundred students currently attending their school. If I can manage a set of a particular size in my mind (whether or not I can visualize all the members of that set simultaneously) do I not have some comprehension of that number?
scarabic@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yes I believe there’s an over-emphasis on the visual here. There’s a low limit on how many distinct objects we can perceive visually at once but that’s not entirely the same as what numbers we can grasp and comprehend.
jerkface@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
There’s also conflation with the number of “chunks” we can hold in mind at a time, which is often estimated at about seven things. But that doesn’t mean we don’t comprehend what eight is.
Numbers are DEEP. You can’t just know things about a number, you have to discover them empirically, experimentally. Every number has essentially infinite properties and you can’t know everything about a number, but you get a familiarity with them. Still, even the simplest numbers have the capacity to surprise in the right context.