Eli5 why it is difficult for humans to read a lot of 0s, like 2000000, but not words?

Question

Eli5 why it is difficult for humans to read a lot of 0s, like 2000000, but not words?

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Answer 1

I forget the name of it (and I’m sure someone here will chime in on it), but the TL/DR goes something like this:

Basically the brain is lazy (or “efficient” depending on how you look at it) and in most folks, it just sort of stops paying attention to/individualizing identical objects/symbols arranged in a simple pattern (like a line) after a certain point. It basically says “yeah, whatever, seen enough of these, next”. That’s why it’s easier to read and clearly identify 9,999,999,999,999 rather than 9999999999999.

As to why it does that, I don’t think anyone is sure. It could be that in nature, things don’t really line up like that, let alone seemingly identical objects, so it could be the brain simply isn’t wired to quantify individual items in that sort of arrangement without concentrating on it.