A patch of lily pads doubles in size every day. If they take 30 days to cover the pond, then on day 29 the pond is only half covered. On day 28, a quarter. On day 25, it’s still…
Original source excerpt
A patch of lily pads doubles in size every day. If they take 30 days to cover the pond, then on day 29 the pond is only half covered. On day 28, a quarter. On day 25, it’s still 97% empty. For three…
A patch of lily pads doubles in size every day. If they take 30 days to cover the pond, then on day 29 the pond is only half covered. On day 28, a quarter. On day 25, it’s still 97% empty. For three and a half weeks, all you can see is a small green patch in the corner of a big pond. Then, in the final five days, they cover everything. Not because anything changed. The pads were doubling the whole time... it’s just that doubling something tiny looks like nothing, and doubling something big looks like an explosion. Our brains don’t work that way. We see a small patch and assume it'll stay small. That’s why things like the internet, smartphones and bitcoin looked like toys for years and then seemed to take over out of nowhere. I wrote about this pond in The Everything Code because it’s the simplest way to explain what’s happening right now. AI and robotics are on that same curve as we speak.... but most people will wait until the pond is obviously covered before they act. By then, it’s day 30. And the game is already over.
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