That’s definitely a problem; a million is a statistic. I think we can try to work around it in some cases, though. You mentioned the numbers 10,000 and 100,000; one might convert these into a car and a house, respectively, by estimating costs. By interpreting such large numbers in terms of these real concepts, we get a more concrete sense of the difference between such large numbers. You can then think of the issue in terms of how often you use the car vs. the house, or even how much time you’re going to spend paying them off. That reduces the difference to something manageable. Obviously, this won’t work in all cases, and the weight or cost of even a real concept can vary based on the person and their location (spatial and temporal), but it can be worth trying.
For another example, consider the way people sometimes talk about government budgets. Someone might be outraged at $100 million going to a certain area, out of the overall budget of $50 billion. “Million” and “billion” are usually processed by our brains as just “big,” so we focus on the 100 and the 50, and 100 is bigger than 50, so… outrage! But if we divide by a million, we have $100 (a new cell phone) vs. $50,000 (a year of college tuition, or an expensive car). The difference is much clearer.
That’s definitely a problem; a million is a statistic. I think we can try to work around it in some cases, though. You mentioned the numbers 10,000 and 100,000; one might convert these into a car and a house, respectively, by estimating costs. By interpreting such large numbers in terms of these real concepts, we get a more concrete sense of the difference between such large numbers. You can then think of the issue in terms of how often you use the car vs. the house, or even how much time you’re going to spend paying them off. That reduces the difference to something manageable. Obviously, this won’t work in all cases, and the weight or cost of even a real concept can vary based on the person and their location (spatial and temporal), but it can be worth trying.
For another example, consider the way people sometimes talk about government budgets. Someone might be outraged at $100 million going to a certain area, out of the overall budget of $50 billion. “Million” and “billion” are usually processed by our brains as just “big,” so we focus on the 100 and the 50, and 100 is bigger than 50, so… outrage! But if we divide by a million, we have $100 (a new cell phone) vs. $50,000 (a year of college tuition, or an expensive car). The difference is much clearer.