Philosophy Now Forum

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 11:50 am

Age wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 3:21 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Fri Nov 14, 2025 6:47 pm It's how exceptionally successful businesses become exceptionally more successful than other similar businesses around them.

How, exactly?

Sometimes, some CEOs will play dumb and pretend that they don't see unethical behaviors from their marketing or sales team that profit the company and then when the unethical behavior becomes public, they will fire the sales team but keep the profits that the sales team made.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 11:50 am Conveniently, having their (referring to the CEOs) cake and eating it too, as the saying goes. In other words, the CEOs are profiting while remaining able to deny that they had anything to do with the unethical profits.

seeds wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 4:26 pm

seeds wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 1:29 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Fri Nov 14, 2025 6:47 pm So investors investing with Musk's companies are giving Musk an incentive to produce more profit. They say they will make Musk a trillionaire by giving him monetary benefits if he increases the wealth of his companies above a certain level (or maybe it's just Tesla, I'm not 100% sure of all the details).

Just for visualization purposes, if you spent one thousand dollars per minute, it would take you more than one-million, nine-hundred-thousand years to burn through a trillion dollars.

Which should give one pause in realizing that the U.S. national debt currently stands at approximately 38 trillion dollars.
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Sorry, I made a mistake in trusting the number that Google AI initially gave to me.

I just now asked Google the same (spell-corrected) question I asked it yesterday which was this...

"...If you spend a thousand dollars a minute, how long would it take to go through a trillion dollars?..."

...to which it replied with the same answer (emphasis mine)...

AI Overview wrote: It would take 1,902,587 years to spend a trillion dollars spending at a rate of $1,000 per minute. This is calculated by dividing a trillion dollars by $1,000, which equals one billion minutes. Converting this to years results in 1,902,587 years.

However, as I thought about it this morning, something seemed fishy about that number, so I did my own (Jethro Bodine style) calculations...

60 minutes in an hour times 24 hours equals 1,440 minutes in a day.

1,440 minutes in a day times 365 days equals 525,600 minutes in a year.

525,600 minutes in a year times 1,000 dollars equals 525,600,000 dollars spent per year (if spent at 1,000 dollars per minute).

525,600,000 dollars spent per year times Google AI's 1,902,587 years equals 999,999,727,200,000 dollars. That's over 999 trillion dollars.

The mistake is in the fact that (as you can see) the number that Google's AI Overview initially provided contained a comma after the 2 (1,902,587) instead of a decimal point (1,902.587) (of which it does correct if you click on the "show more" mode).

And even the corrected number may be wrong (can someone good at math please chime in here? I'm too lazy to do the further calculations )

Moral of the story: Be careful because you cannot always trust Google to supply a correct answer.

Again, my apologies for the error.
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Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 4:56 pm

seeds wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 4:55 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 4:32 pm No worries.

Dang it, Gary, you're too fast at responding.

In the edited version of my post, I wondered if even the corrected number (1,902 years) was accurate?

As I said, I'm too lazy to do my Jethro Bodine style of mathematics any further. Are there any math whizzes on site who can double check that number?
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What are you trying to calculate?

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 5:59 pm

seeds wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 5:34 pm

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 4:56 pm

What are you trying to calculate?

Never mind, I got it...

There are 525,600 minutes in a year.

If you multiply 525,600 minutes times 1,902 (years) it equals 999,691,200 minutes.

If you multiply 999,691,200 minutes times 1,000 (dollars) it equals 999,691,200,000 dollars (almost a trillion dollars).

So, the 1,902-year figure is pretty close.

Again, I'm just trying to help us visualize how much a trillion dollars is so that we can see what Elon (Scrooge) McMusk will be sitting atop.

Here's another way of visualizing it in stacks of 100-dollar bills on pallets...

https://preview.redd.it/a-cool-guide-fo ... 64f5508f39
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Are you trying to find out how long it would take to spend 1 trillion dollars at X dollars/minute? If you tell me what the value of X is, I can tell you how long it would take to spend that money in minutes or years or whatever.

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sat Nov 15, 2025 5:59 pm I believe it would involve dividing fractions. I don't think I can explain the equation typing on a keyboard though. I'm rusty at math.