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EU considers calculating X fines by including revenue from Musk’s other firms (arstechnica.com)

submitted 4 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 74 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (18 children)

Hi I'm a mathematician.

What the actual fuck are you talking about?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago) (12 children)

While I disagree that "billions is beyond being halved", there is some truth to the idea that numbers can get so big that halving doesn't make much difference. That seems very very counter-intuitive, so I'll try to briefly explain.

Consider (10^10 + 2). That's 10000000000+2. I think it's fair to say that the +2 doesn't make a lot of difference. It's still approximately 10^10.

So then, consider 10^(10^10)×100. That's a huge number, too big to type here, then multiplied by 100. So the result is 100 times bigger than the huge number. But... writing it down we see this:

10^(10^10)×100 = 10^(10^10+2) ≈ 10^(10^10).

So although ×100 does make it one hundred times bigger... that just doesn't really make a lot of difference to a number as big as that one. As numbers get bigger and bigger, they start to take on properties a bit like 'infinity'. Addition stops being important, then multiplication, then for even bigger numbers exponentiation doesn't huge much of an impact either.

Mathematically, I think this is really cool and interesting. But I don't think 1 billion is that big. 10^9 is big enough that +2 doesn't matter much, but not so big that ×2 doesn't matter.

[edit] (I'm struggling to get the nested powers to look right... So hopefully my meaning is clear enough anyway.)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago (5 children)

A single billion, when put in terms of money, is enough that - simply invested in GICs and bonds, earning a very, very conservative 1% interest - it would earn you ten million dollars a year in interest alone.

I would challenge you to even come up with a reasonable way to spend ten million dollars a year. By my back of the napkin math you could vacation every single day, living in hotels and eating at fancy restaurants, and still not make a dent in that.

Musk has an estimated net worth of $247 billion. You could fine him 99% of his current wealth, and he would still struggle to spend enough that he wouldn't end up increasing his remaining wealth every year.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago (2 children)

I would challenge you to even come up with a reasonable way to spend ten million dollars a year.

I would fund multiple forms of art media and have them released for free every year while living on ramen in my leaky apartment

Hello to any billionaires looking for a worthy heir

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

Now imagine a world where, instead of there being billionaires, everyone had their basic needs met, so artists could afford to focus on creating their art instead of relying on handouts from a capricious god.