How Human Beings Suck At Understanding Exponential Growth And Why It Matters

[hatrack]

EDIT

But the second half of the chessboard has been and always will be a dangerous and fragile place. COVID-19 is showing this in the United States, Brazil, Italy, Mexico and India. Meanwhile, the exponential function accelerates the relentless growth of energy consumption, the power of biological invasions and the peril of climate disruption. About 300 years ago the human population went on an exponential ride thanks to the proliferation of fossil fuels, which allowed an increasing number of people to eat, drink and spend like kings.

It took roughly 300 years for human population to double from 500 million to roughly one billion in 1804. It took 110 years to double to 1.8 billion. Then things went wild, taking only 60 years to hit 3.6 billion. And then just 45 years to hit 7.3 billion in 2017. The consumption patterns driven by nearly eight billion people have created an exponential assault on the Earth’s finite resources.

In 1900, the globe dug up seven billion tonnes of coal, iron, fish, wood fertilizer and aluminum to keep the economy humming. By 2000, the economy consumed 49 billion tonnes of materials from the Earth. Now we carelessly extract 90-billion tonnes and plan to double that every 30 to 40 years. The global chessboard is groaning. Exponential growth again explains why there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean by 2050, and why small particles of plastic can now be found in many vegetables.

When confronted with exponential growth, a gardener can attack every dandelion or thistle as they rise. Or they can watch their garden quickly become a kingdom of weeds. Exponential growth gives people two basic choices: act early or be overwhelmed. It then follows its own logic: things will initially get worse even when good actions are taken before they improve.

EDIT

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/07/16/Exponential-Growth-Proving-Lethal/

[progree]

1. Exponential growth: the deficit under Trump. 2nd half of chessboard: Argentina, Zimbabwe

I had not heard of the "second half of the chessboard" before - the article explains it

A clever man invented a chessboard and presented the gift to a powerful king or emperor. Pleased by the gift, the ruler asked the inventor what he wanted in return.

The inventor placed one grain of wheat or rice on the first square and asked the king to double the number of grains on every square.

What a nitwit, thought the king. “I was prepared to offer the man a bag of gold and all he wants are a few silly grains.”

One grain became two, and two became four, and four became eight. At the end of the first row, a pile of 128 grains had accumulated. The king just smiled as bowls of grain became barrels of grain.

By the middle of the fourth row the grains totaled 2.1 billion, and there was no room in the castle. The king grew nervous. If he had honoured the inventor’s exponential request, the kingdom would have had to surrender 9.2 quintillion grains — about 2,000 times current global production.

...

In 1999 Ray Kurzweil, a technology guru and computer scientist, invented a new expression: “The second half of the chessboard.”

By the second half, he meant the point where exponential growth takes on a life of its own, and “its impacts become massive, things get crazy, and the acceleration starts to elude most humans’ imagination and grasp,” explained Bruno Giussani, the European director of TED, in a 2017 Edge article.