[saulpw]

> evolution has spend quadrillions of hours doing just that

Magnitude pedantery incoming: 1 billion years is "only" about 10 trillion hours.

[pixl97]

Thank goodness it was only one bacteria doing all that evolving!

Think of combined manpower. If you have 2 people working an 8 hour shift you've spent 16 hours.

/Pedantry crisis averted.

[saulpw]

Oh good, that does make me rest easier. Though technically the units should be man-hours (or bacterium-hours?). Now this makes me wonder how many life-hours there have been...looks like ^40 'beings' over all time[0], and ^43 being-hours total.

Fun math!

[0]Crockford et al. (2023) estimate about 10^30 cells exist today, and between 10^39 and 10^40 cells have ever existed on Earth.

[webnrrd2k]

Yeah, but it would be more-or-less in parallel, spread over however many organisms