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It seems the rest of HN disagrees with me, but when I hear "trillions" I think in plurality of trillions, a handful maybe, but afaik these things don't really l
by kakarot 10y ago
It seems the rest of HN disagrees with me, but when I hear "trillions" I think in plurality of trillions, a handful maybe, but afaik these things don't really live past 2 trillion years
- Retra 10y agoThat's because that number is a reference to a plurality of years, not a plurality of trillions.
- kakarot 10y agoIf you say so, I guess I'm just wrong about this. Thank you for trying to clarify for me, instead of just downvoting me into oblivion like everyone else.
- Retra 10y agoI don't think you're "just wrong," there's definitely some ambiguity. You can use "trillions" to denote the scale or magnitude of a value and also to denote a denomination.
- kakarot 10y agoI definitely think it's a an interesting case of context, because if you say a quantity "could even be in the hundreds" it is unambiguously stating it could be within the singular hundreds. But change that into "is in the hundreds" and suddenly you aren't so sure. Even the term "hundreds" alone seems to carry less ambiguity than its superiors, thousands, billions, etc. The higher the quantity, the more imprecision when using the plural form. I guess I was just trying to encourage a little more precision when talking astronomically, though retroactively I see that I could have been less of a dick about it.