What Is This Base Effect?

Being Aware, Perceiving:

I wrote a while ago to be aware. Perceiving the brother of being aware.

Although something we see and hear attracts our attention, it is not always easy to perceive. In order to perceive some things, it is necessary to make a comparison with something objective.

Okay, abstract concepts are already very difficult, sometimes even impossible, to perceive, but those topics are more of a philosophy. Philosophers have produced ideas on such deep topics throughout history, but sometimes there are concepts that we cannot come to a conclusion.

I want to at least talk about something dimensional. Even if they can't be touched or seen with the naked eye, at least the things we're sure have dimensions.

Perceiving such things is usually possible when we compare them to something we see around us, that we can hold in our hands, that we can weigh. Only then do we begin to perceive its dimensions. At least that's how I understand it, I perceive it more easily.

This is especially true for numbers, when it comes to very large or very small numbers, I have a really hard time perceiving the size.

For example, we hear it all the time, mostly in our own language. Some still say the price of something with old money, especially to make it bigger, and they say it costs a quadrillion.

Wealth Criterion:

In old movies, the indicator of wealth was being a millionaire. With this logic, it actually has to happen. For some reason, there is no such thing as "biner" in very old movies. They used to say that those who have money in the order of a thousand are very rich. Anyway, back then, they only called the rich rich, but later on the name was changed. Speaking of rich, there are rich people, some people only have a rich heart. For example, I am.

Today's word for wealth is billionaire. Now there are not only Turkish lira, but also dollar billionaires.

How big is the billions of these billionaires, for example? How do we know?

It occurred to me to start with an account like this. We have ten fingers on both hands, for example, if we say that ten fingers are a human, when we calculate it, it is a hundred million people. Look, it's starting to mean something to me now. more than the population of Turkey. If you say "I will count one billion fingers", Turkey will not be enough, it will not be enough to include refugees. Billions is such a big number. Imagine you are counting fingers one by one. Well, you would probably need a lot of time to count that many fingers.

When I say real time, look what came to my mind. Those who travel a lot know that Turkey is not a big country, just go and go, the roads never end.

Once with a friend of mine, I took a car from Ankara to Erzincan, the company car, we drove together, he and I drove on the road, we got to Erzincan in about eleven hours, taking a rest.

Distances, Perceptions:

I don't know what the longest distance is in Turkey, but if we say Muğla at one end and Kars at the other, it seems quite long. I looked on the internet, it says the distance from Muğla to Kars is 1640 km, it takes 19 hours and 57 minutes by car, there is also price information, they also gave 1.106 TL ~ 2.003 TL. In any case, it is the cost of gasoline that appears in the figure. Although they kept the price range quite wide, there is almost twice the difference. What a beautiful thing is the internet. They have made a ready-made mileage calculation site.

In the past, you will open the map, the old maps will be layered, if a little old, the folded place will be worn out, if it is something that comes right there, what you are looking for cannot be read. If you ask how many hours I will go, that information will not be available, but you will guess for yourself, maybe if there is someone close to you who knows, they will say that you can't go down that far.

Anyway, I was wondering between Ankara and Erzincan, I entered the information, the output was 685 kilometers, it says that you can go by car in 8 hours and 11 minutes. It means we rested a lot on the way. Actually, that trip was a long time ago, I think it was a year or two after the famous Erzincan earthquake in 1995. At that time, the roads were very old, narrow, if a truck came in front of you, you would follow it slowly for a long time, even if it was a suitable flat, you could pass. Now the roads are definitely corrected, maybe the distance is shortened, it is probably more accessible now. Double roads have already been built everywhere, I hope Erzincan has taken its share. I do not know. Erzincan is a beautiful city. There are restaurants next to the creek, the trout is delicious. There is a waterfall. We are a beautiful city.

On the Billion Term:

Why did this moment come to my mind, I remember. I wanted to compare what we call billions in terms of duration, I looked for a reference in my memory. For some reason, this memory came to my mind as the longest trip I can remember. Actually, I've traveled longer distances as I've traveled to many places, but this was one of those long trips I personally chauffeured, so I guess I remembered that when I said time passed. I mostly sleep on bus and train journeys. You don't realize how time flies when you sleep. It means that it is engraved in memory when you are behind the wheel.

Let's come to our billion seconds, yes, how long do you think a billion seconds? Second, you know, the time elapsed when a tick-tock-tick-tock sound was heard in the old hours.

I opened the calculator, first I entered a minute 60 seconds, an hour 60 minutes, a day 24 hours, it's only 86,400, I'm still far from a billion. Although this account happened one day, 24 hours, in such a second, if I were the old me, I would go from Ankara to Erzincan and come back, moreover, I would have had two extra hours, and I would have eaten a lot on the way, I guess, I would have gone to rest.

Anyway, let's continue, let's see if we say 365 days a year, 31 million-odd, if we say 10 years, 311 million-odd, yes, we're close, it's like three times as much, 30, 31, 32, bingo, yes, we found a billion.

I remember thirty-two years ago, in 1990, I was not even a new engineer yet, I was in the last year of the extended school, I was in the project office where I worked part-time, in Ankara. It's been quite a while, this one billion seconds of ours. Tick ​​tock, tick tock, how quickly time flies.

Understanding, Perceiving the Trillion:

Let's look at it from another angle, if you want, let's compare it with a little thing. For some reason, the first thing that comes to my mind is the question of how many cells do we have in the human body.

I opened our new encyclopedia on the internet, I looked, I am writing the first information that comes out:

"The average adult human has 100 trillion cells of its own and species-specific. In other words, you have an average of 100 trillion Homo sapiens cells in your body. In contrast, there are around 1,500 trillion (=1.5 quadrillion) microbial cells on average."

Well? I don't understand now, it says trillion, 100 trillion cells. One hundred thousand times our billion. I don't know how big it would be even if I split it into a thousand pieces, not a hundred thousand. What really struck me was that there are much more microbes than our own cells, 1.5 quadrillion. Again quadrillion!

I'd better look for another reference, one more question, how many molecules are in a drop of water for example? I found a site that makes long calculations, it says that what you call drops is different, at first, they calculated over 20 drops of 5 ml. I follow the calculations, they never write the result, formulas, molecular calculations, I actually like such topics if I have time. Anyway, I finally found it. There are 1.67 sextillion water molecules in a drop of water. What was that sextillion? It says ten to the 21st. Our billion was 9 to the tenth. It's a thousand times more than a billion billion, not mind-blowing numbers. Let me say a tiny speck of water for a billion water molecules.

I can't look any further.

Yes, I like mathematics, but most of the time, it is not possible to perceive the numbers in our calculations unless we compare them with something objective. Every day, we looked at so many references in order to perceive even the billion in front of our eyes, in our tongues, in our ears.

Our perception also changes according to the base we refer to. Sometimes it seems like a big thing, all these years have passed, the years when I took my first steps in the profession, easy on the tongue, sometimes a speck of water. A tiny little thing. It's not even visible.

There is one more thing that I don't quite understand.

Reference Values ​​in Inflation:

These days, I've always heard it on the news, on talk shows. For example, in September, inflation will decrease due to the base effect. It's a base effect thing on everyone's lips. I more or less understand what happened, but I think it is a bit misleading in monthly inflation calculations, they use it deliberately, when they want to show it low, the supporters of the government say this month, they immediately object to it from the opposite side, but they say that there is a base effect in it. Sometimes the opposite happens, this month it happened like this, but the supporters of the government say that there is a base effect in this, they say that it is actually low or something, of course, the objection immediately.

Yes, I also make such comparisons. We say that the weather is colder this year than last year, if there are snow puddles on the road. So our reference is the same time last year. If we take the previous year as a reference, maybe it was cold again, there was snow again. It would be the same again, we would say there is snow again. In fact, we do that as well, we sometimes say that there was a lot of snow in the previous year.

For some reason, they do not take a fixed reference in these inflation rates. The rate is always announced with reference to the same month last year. Sometimes it is useful to refer to a year ago, but if you remember a year ago it makes sense, if you can perceive the change. A newly built building, snow on the road is perceptible, and inflation is something we feel right now, something we can compare in shorter timeframes. If only there was a fixed reference information, but we could compare it with the reference.

For example, I can remember the prices of butter. I watched the price of butter, which I bought at the market for 109 rubles, first increased to 119 rubles, then to 129 rubles for a while, and now to 139 rubles. But that's it, more than that doesn't interest me, and I don't want to waste any memory. Our lady takes care of those things. The lady remembers the prices 10 years ago, sometimes even 20 years ago, she never forgets the price, especially if it is something we bought, she says, "We bought it for such and such a long time." Women are feared. They all have tremendous memories. They don't forget anything. My memory is not enough.

Anyway, on the screens, everyone talks as they see fit. One says, sir, that inflation will decrease by that much, the other one says no, sir, that prices will not decrease, he says base effect. They talk about what they want to draw attention to, what they want to hide, like those who say so many quadrillions with old money to make something look big. All for perception. Everyone is trying to deceive the society.

I don't want to be fooled by anyone. Let's hold on to a reference that we are sure of, and try to understand what it actually means. Isn't it okay, let's compare it to another reference that we are sure of, that we know, until we understand it ourselves.

Now I think of a friend of mine, when I was at university, a friend of mine used to say how many bottles of Coke is the price for everything, he used to calculate the price of everything with a bottle of Coke.

Conclusion:

What they call the base effect only serves to mislead our perceptions, a variable reference does not give me any proper information. If I want to perceive something, I like to weigh it against a fixed reference. I'm comparing it to something I know.

The ancients call it touchstone, the stone they rub to understand the value of gold and silver. I don't know how they figured it out by rubbing, but it's the stone that has survived until today.

If you want to understand the value of something, it will be your touchstone, otherwise get one. I have my touchstones.

Love and regards from Moscow.