Here a Billion, There a Billion

Loose Talk, Very Loose Talk

    Here is a quotation from a January 3 NY Times Book Review. Check it out,¹ if you care to, but I am just putting forward (the phrase in italics) as a sample of a very frequent form of loose talk:

Using the improved detection capacity of genetic sequencing techniques, scientists have                  discovered that 100 trillion microscopic creatures live in and on the body, influencing everything from the intensity of our immune responses and our moods to our dietary preferences and propensity to gain weight.

   Let me write out that number (and I hope I got it right): 100,000,000,000,000—one thousand times one billion. I’m not a cell biologist, to paraphrase many Republicans’ response to climate change, but I am skeptical about the meaningfulness of so huge and rounded off a number. Physics is probably capable of coming up with precise measurements up there somewhere, though not even physics gets into that numerical stratosphere.

   Surely no one counted those “microscopic creatures”—how could one? That makes  statements like these “loose talk,” because that huge (but misleadingly precise) number really stands for “an awful lot” or, in more picturesque language, “a more humongous” number of those very little creatures.

   If I am right, apparent precision: an actual number is in effect a masked way of engaging in loose talk.

¹http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/03/books/review/the-diet-myth-the-good-gut-and-the-hidden-half-of-nature.html?ref=todayspaper