Is "human scale" closer to the very small than the very large? I think it is.
OR is that just a function of the limits on perception and measurement placed on us by our scale?
@futurebird We (very approximately) know the limits of the very large, but we're still struggling even to find the limits of the very small. Even just looking at atoms alone (much less subatomic particles and perhaps beyond like strings) starts producing insane numbers.
So I'm going to say we're closer to the large than the small.
And I realize that's really saying something because the large scale is... HUGE.
But there isn't an upper limit on large.
With small you hit the plank and can't do much else.
@futurebird I think there actually are two upper limits. First there's the obvious: what actually physically exists. (Eg all the mass out there in stars, planets, rocks, etc etc.)
The other is the less obvious: it's unlikely things as we know them can exist outside the fabric of spacetime. (As for if anything can exist beyond that, that can't be answered, but if the answer was yes, it wouldn't be part of our universe.)
@futurebird @nazokiyoubinbou There is the observable universe, which is a pretty reasonable upper limit, especially since the *reachable* universe is smaller than this.
@futurebird @nazokiyoubinbou And, given that the Planck length is at 10^-37, while the observable universe is at 10^26, we seem to be significantly closer to the very large.
@futurebird @nazokiyoubinbou it's not even clear that the Planck length is a hard limit to smallness, just that there's somewhat speculative theoretical reason to believe that space doesn't work in a way we're accustomed to on any scale smaller than that.
@futurebird @nazokiyoubinbou the associated "Planck mass" is neither super small nor super big in our terms, it's almost mundane--about 22 micrograms, much bigger than a typical cell. There are insects that are smaller. Roger Penrose seems to have thought that was A Clue that biology was doing weird quantum gravity things of relevance to the measurement problem and consciousness, but I never found his arguments persuasive.