On any given day, Elon Musk is worth about a trillion dollars. This does not mean that he has a trillion dollar bills sitting in an old-timey vault in a dusty basement somewhere; his wealth is mostly tied up in shares of SpaceX and Tesla. But if he were to cash those out, sell Neuralink and the Boring Company, and scrounge together some extra change, his checking account would hit 13 digits.
\n\n“Trillionaire” is an easy enough word to say. It’s fun, even! Rolls off the tongue. But research has shown that the human brain has a very hard time comprehending the actual size and scope of large numbers. “Trillion” sounds like a short hop from “billion,” after all, even though it is in fact 1,000 times bigger. And even if you are somehow able to wrap your mind around that immense scale, it still feels abstract, no matter how many times you compare it to the area of Central Park or the weight of a fleet of trucks. Maybe a better way to visualize a trillion dollars, then, is through what you can actually buy with it.
\n\nWIRED has partnered with Neal Agarwal, the proprietor of the consistently delightful…
Original source: https://www.wired.com/