To be fair, knowing 10000 things is far from knowing everything.
So in Chinese traditions “10000” is just a stand in for “really big number”. Kind of like how, at least here in the states, well say “there’s a million of them”. Not that there is literally 1,000,000 of the thing, but more there is just a lot of them.
there’s a myriad of phrases like that
Just to spell it out for people: myriad means 10,000 but has been used as a stand in for “huge variety” for so long that people don’t know that anymore.
Yeah, a ton
Still pretty impressive for an owl.
If words count as things, then most people know way more than that.
Even concepts can easily surpass that
I know at least 8356 numbers alone
Wow, I only know 8355 numbers. That’s very impressive.
I can do ya one better…
Well it’s a white mushroom with gills so that narrows the possibility space to 1 mildly tasty shroom and eight gorillion super deadly poisonous liver failure shrooms
So you’re saying there’s a chance…
Well, this local mushroom is either the Taste Scrumptiouspuff, which is amazing is stews, roasts and stirfry… or the murderkilldeathshroom. Would you say this fringe is curved with a swirl, or swirled with a curve?
Can’t tell if my back hurts because random millennial moment after mushroom foraging, or because my kidneys are failing.
Or both!
In my part of the world, there are at least a dozen+ culinary and/or medicinal mushrooms that are distinctive and easy to identify (even by casuals like me). These don’t really have any dangerous look-a-likes that also grow in the same area. I stick to those and those alone. Granted, even at 12 or so species that I can ID, that’s probably like a tiny fraction of the number of different species that exist in this area.
Some areas have mushrooms that are so similar the only reliable way to identify them is using a spore print.
Plants and animals tend to have more distinct identifying features like leaf patterns, bark texture or hair color.
I’m the opposite, I can tell some really difficult mushrooms apart due to good ol’ hyperfixation but I still know jack about plants and trees.
