Exponential Growth

Our intuition is calibrated for linear processes — we systematically and dramatically underestimate the power of exponential growth and compounding.

• Folding a sheet of paper 42 times would produce a stack reaching from Earth to the Moon — almost no one's intuition gets within an order of magnitude of this.
• A pond lily that doubles in area every day covers half the pond on day 29 — and the entire pond on day 30. Most people assume the pond is mostly empty until very late.
• The inventor of chess who asked for grains of rice doubling on each square: the total exceeds all the rice ever grown in human history.