[FRIAM] The comparative thickness of the tropospheree
Marcus Daniels
marcus at snoutfarm.com
Sun Apr 27 23:36:11 EDT 2025
I wonder if the George makers 1) realized that people have an affinity to iffy analogies and they should give the people what they want, or 2) the LLM was prone to generating them so they just made it a feature?
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson
Sent: Sunday, April 27, 2025 8:12 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam at redfish.com>
Subject: [FRIAM] The comparative thickness of the tropospheree
George and I were looking for intuition pumps to help a reader imagine how very thin the troposphere is. Here is what we came up with:
Ordered by Type: Too Thin → Best Match → Too Thick
Material / Object
Relative Thickness
Too Thin or Too Thick?
Notes
Weather balloon skin (fully inflated)
~280× too thin
Way too thin
Soap-film fragile
Plastic wrap (1 layer)
~7× too thin
Too thin
Would need ~7 layers
Eyeball tear film
~4× too thin
Slightly too thin
Very close, poetic comparison
Party balloon skin (inflated)
~3× too thin
Slightly too thin
Best easy everyday match
Troposphere
Apple peel
~14× too thick
Too thick
Best among fruits
Basketball skin
~16× too thick
Too thick
Similar to soccer ball
Soccer ball skin
~17× too thick
Too thick
Very close to basketball
Baseball leather skin
~25× too thick
Too thick
Heavier and thicker still
Tennis ball felt+skin
~37× too thick
Too thick
Very thick and fuzzy
Navel Orange peel
~70× too thick
Way too thick
Thickest skin we've discussed
--
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
nthompson at clarku.edu <mailto:nthompson at clarku.edu>
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson
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