Exponential Growth

our inability to intuitively understand exponential growth

see exponent, math notation

linear growth is intuitive, but exponential growth is not. our brain didn't evolve an intuition for exponential growth because it wasn't needed for survival

examples

• folding a piece of paper in half 50 times will make it so thick it would nearly reach the sun, which is unintuitive to us
• a 5% inflation rate doesn't seem so bad, but your money being worth half as much in 14 years sounds like a disaster