2 ms·

Exponential growth is never vertical. Why must we resort to hyperbole when the truth is scary enough?

• bsder 6y ago
  To a first order approximation it is. And the reason we need to try analogies and hyperbole is because even people who are arguing in good faith don't get exponential growth. Normal people look at 2 on day 1, 4 on day 4, 8 on day 7 and think "Oh, about 4 every 3 days. Shrug. No big deal." Horizontal. Epidemiologists look at that and go "AHHHHH! Doubling every 3 days. Shut everything down or we'll have a million in 2 months and 10 million a week later." They're looking at the vertical section of the curve. This is similar to people misunderstanding fire. Most people have experienced a campfire. The energy drops off like 1/r^3, so it's no big deal. Most people haven't experienced a wind driven wall of flame where the energy drops off like 1/r so things simply spontaneously combust next to the flamefront. And that's just cubic vs linear.
  • tathougies 6y ago
    > Normal people look at 2 on day 1, 4 on day 4, 8 on day 7 and think "Oh, about 4 every 3 days. Shrug. No big deal." Horizontal. Yeah well HN is mostly a bunch of software engineers who spend most of their day relying on the fundamental that at the end of 32 days in your example, there'll be 4 billion, so... On the other hand your example is extremely contrived, because exponential growth in epidemiology is mostly not possible except for short periods.