CONCEPT
Phenomenology of the Exponential
The cognitive fact that exponential growth is invisible to the person living through it — each doubling feels incremental while the cumulative effect exceeds all intuition, producing systematic underestimation of where one is standing on the curve.
There is a parable about a king and a chessboard: one grain of rice on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, doubling each time. The king agrees, thinking the cost trivial. By the thirty-second square, the debt exceeds four billion grains. By the sixty-fourth, the total outweighs the world's annual rice production. The parable illustrates the power of exponential growth. Moore's career illustrates something more subtle: exponential growth is invisible to the person living through it. Each doubling, experienced in real time, feels like incremental improvement. The cumulative effect is astonishing only in retrospect.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Intel's 4004 microprocessor (1971) contained 2,300 transistors. The 8080 (1974) contained 4,500 — a doubling. A meaningful engineering achievement, nothing that felt like revolution to the engineers who accomplished it. The 8086 (1978) contained 29,000. The 80286 (1982) contained 134,000. Each generation represented roughly a doubling; each