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Koan 5: More of the same can be a whole new thing by cheyenne0909 on 03-14-2017
Explosive growth is exponential growth doubling at a steady rate
If you were earning 100% annual interest on your savings account in 10 years your money would have increased more than a thousandfold, and in 20 years more than a million fold
Did you know when something grows exponentially for a long time it may seem not to bw changing at all
If we don't watch it steadily it will seem as though something discontinuous and radical occurred while we weren't looking
Imagine one person infecting 2 healthy people and the next day after that each of those infected two others and the next day after that those two infected two others and so on. The number of newly infected each day grows from 2 or 4 to 8. In a week 128 people come down with this disease in a single day and twice that number are now sick, but in the population of 10 million, no one notices
But....after another week 40% of the population is sick and the society collapses
Exponential growth takes very little time to pass from unnoticeable change to highly visible
Suppose it took a week to develop and administer vaccine. Then noticing the epidemic after a week and a half would have left ample time to prevent this disaster.
But that would have required understanding that there was an epidemic when only 2,000 people out of 10 million were infected
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