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by jojojaf 953 days ago
I didn't read the article but, small numbers are more immediately useful. Larger numbers are needed for describing more complex phenomena, and their construction relies on smaller numbers. So I find the explanation to the title of this article to be intuitively obvious; I don't see how it could be possible for a brain to evolve to perceive large numbers better than smaller ones
2 comments

Perhaps a fish or an insect might benefit more from knowing an accurate approximation of their or another school/swarm, than it would from knowing if there are 2 or 4 of them somewhere (since there seldom are so few).
Brain systems do handle order of magnitude changes. E.g. going from dimly lit room [1-3] to bright sunlight. [1000-2000]