2min chapter

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish cover image

#87 Hannah Fry: The Role of Algorithms

The Knowledge Project with Shane Parrish

CHAPTER

Expedential Growth - Is It Counter Intuitive?

i would love to find a way to help people think better in terms of expedentiality, yes. Im part of the problem is that the word expedentes gets thrown around like, you know, this project's expedationlly more difficult,. That's not what the word means and it is really counter intuitede. I mean, excidental growth is just beyond imagining. It's just completely counterintuitive at all....

00:00
Speaker 2
It seemed to me, i mean, there was two different types of people, just so broadly general ize, going into this pandamic there was people who understood non linear and expedetial functions, and people who maybe had a harder time with that. And the people who did seem to understand or grasp those concepts better seemd to take it alot more seriously than the people that didn't. And i would love to find a way to help people think better in terms of expedentiality, yes, of course. Im part of the problem
Speaker 1
is that the word expedentes gets thrown around like, you know, people say, ah, this, this project's expedationlly more difficult, or, you know, expedentially more dangerous and sight more nos not. That's not what the word means, and it is really counter intuitede. Because the thing about expedential growth, it doesn't just mean big, it doesn't just mean lots. It means something very specific. It means that it, it's where something is changing by a fixed fraction in a fixed period. So this, this firus, for instance, is doubling every five days. So doubling fixed fraction every five days is a fixed period. And i think that it's just, ye, i mean, just not something that's counter intuitive at all. Like, there's the really classic example of an the rice on a the chessboard. So this is this idea a. It's like a classic story about an indian king who was really impressed with the chess boards a when it was, when it was shown to him. And so he said, o k il, tell you what a, i will i'll give you a grain of rice for the first square, and then we'll double the grains of rice every subsequent square. A, which sounds like, oh, that's not very much the beginning. And it's like one grain, then two grains, and then four grains. Ike oca. You know, this is not going to cost me very much. The thing iss that by the end of the, the end of the chessboard, you need, like, a lot of rice. Essentially, you need eighteen quintilion grains of rice, which is essentially, work this out. If you take liverpool, rea of liverpool. It's a hofer. American listeners. Isn't easy to imagine, but it's essentially like a whole city. It's that an area that size, stackd three kilometers high with rice. That's how much ricis sych. I mean, excidental growth is just beyond imagining. It's just completely counterintuitive.

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