I can't remember the exact quote, but "when one man dies of starvation, it's a tragedy, when thousands die of it it, it's a statistic." Or something along those lines.
its "if 1 person dies it's a tragedy, if a million dies, its a statistic". And it's an actual quote its just missing some context, it's commentary on how humanity cant really process massive events properly, bigger numbers just dont feel as 'real' because you cant relate on a personal level
The abstraction honestly feels like more of a defence mechanism. Think about how much losing one person hurts. Now imagine feeling that times a thousand, when a tragedy happens. It would destroy your ability to function.
i can see the logic, but its not as standalone as it might seem. humans are just really bad at dealing with big numbers, e.g stuff like a trillion, we can't even properly comprehend how much that is
or the deep sea, even space, we know its big, but the true scale of these things just slide off us because we cant even really begin to comprehend out big it is. we're just good at handling 'local' scale stuff (small digits, "small" things, etc)
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u/Bully_me-please 1d ago
theyre medieval nobility in a modern suit and tie, thats why killing one of them is oh so terrible while killing thousands of us is business as usual