Exponential growth bias

Biological Parallel

Bacterial populations double every 20 minutes under ideal conditions—exponential growth. One E. coli becomes 16 million in 8 hours, yet humans consistently underestimate: asked to predict population size, estimates fall 10-100x below actual exponential trajectories. This exponential blindness appears everywhere: pandemic spread (one case → 100,000 in weeks), compound interest (saving $100/month seems trivial until year 30), network effects (viral growth seems impossible until it happens). The bias exists because ancestral environments exhibited linear payoffs: hunt one more hour, get one more antelope; plant one more acre, harvest proportionally more grain. Exponential growth is biology's boom-phase anomaly—it only appears during resource abundance before carrying capacity intervenes.