When faced with too many objects, my daughter says 20, because that's the biggest number she knows. As we grow older, our scope of numbers increases to hundreds, thousands, and beyond. Today, we measure corruption in billions and not petty millions.
Scientists have to deal with even huge numbers. There's Googol (based on which Google was named) and Googolplex. And the biggest number that's ever been used is the Graham's Number. It's unimaginably HUGE.
It's almost as if our knowledge of bigger and bigger numbers reflects the progress of our species.
What if there's an advanced alien civilisation out there, that treats Graham's number as we look at kids who think 20 is big...
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