big O() notation is simply not precise enough (and not meant to be) to be used in such nitpicky discussions. Everything is O(1) for a large anough constant, for

big O() notation is simply not precise enough (and not meant to be) to be used in such nitpicky discussions. Everything is O(1) for a large anough constant, for example O(live time of the universe). There are other notations like small o(), Omega(), omega() or theta() to capture the asymtotic runtime behavior more or less precisely.