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Linear Minds in an Exponential Age
Our ancient linear minds are failing in their desperate attempt to grasp nonlinear exponential reality
We are terrible at understanding the world we live in. Not because we lack intelligence, but because the world is nonlinear, fractal, complex, exponential, but we perceive it in straight lines.
The Grain of Rice That Broke the Kingdom
There is an old legend — told in various forms across Persia, India and China — about a wise man who invented the game of chess and presented it to his king. Delighted, the king offered any reward the inventor desired. The man’s request was absurdly modest: one grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard, two on the second, four on the third, doubling with each square until all sixty-four were filled.
The king laughed and agreed immediately. He didn’t know anything about the power of the exponential curve.
But by the time they reached the twentieth square, they owed over a million grains. By the thirtieth, a billion. By the sixty-fourth, the number exceeded all the rice that had ever been grown in the history of human civilisation — roughly 18 quintillion grains.
The king, needless to say, could not pay. His thinking was linear. The inventor had a huge…
