I thought this had to be hyperbole, so I did the math myself. I'm assuming human history is 200,000 years as google says, and we want to narrow this down to the second the bike disappeared. also that the bike instantly vanished so there's no partially existing bike.

each operation divides the time left in half, so to get from 200k years (6.311×10^12 seconds) to 1 would take ~42.58 divisions, call it 43. even if we take a minute on average to seek and decide whether the bike is there or not it would still be less than an hour of manual sorting

hell, at 60fps it would only take another 6 divisions to narrow it down to a single frame, still under an hour

edit: to use the entire hour we'd need a couple more universes worth of video time to sort through, 36.5 billion years worth to be exact. or a measly 609 million years if we need to find that single frame at 60fps

[–] xantoxis@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

This argument did not go well

You can't convince people to do their job with logic when they just don't want to do their job. After minorities, the thing cops hate most is doing their job.

[–] dejected_warp_core@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This didn't go down well.

IT consulting pro-tip: Customers would rather pay for your time and expertise, than be made to feel stupid that they didn't think of something so simple themselves.

[–] mwknight@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

After working in desktop support for a year after college, I realized that people just wanted their problem solved and to not feel frustrated. That realization made my job immensely easier because I pivoted from copying a file in 30 seconds and walking away to talking to them a little bit and letting them feel good after we were done. My ticket closing speed slowed down a little but people felt better and I consistently got positive feedback.