Human brain not wired for exponential growth

The change we will face in the coming years will be an exponential change. And that is difficult to understand, because our human brain is not wired for exponential growth. We simply can not understand and imagine it.

A nice example to experience that is one thought experiment I found in ‘Abundance’ from Kotler.

If I asked you to go out your front door and take 30 steps, I’ll bet you could guess about where you’d end up, without even taking that short walk. It is a simple linear step-by-step experience you’ve done thousand times.

But, what if I told you to take 30 exponential steps. That is to say, double the size of your step each time. 1+2+4+8+16+32+64+… If you took 30 exponential steps out of your front door, where do you think you’d end up?

The answer? You’d go around the Earth 26 times!

The fact we don’t handle exponential growth properly is something we see with the spread of the Corona virus as well. We typically underestimate the impact.

Let’s learn from it and move to action as soon as possible. On the Corona side (to manage the load of hospitals) as well as prepping ourselves for the Technological change we will see the coming years!