{"id":4688,"date":"2025-12-13T10:43:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T15:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/?p=4688"},"modified":"2025-12-13T10:43:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T15:43:00","slug":"exponential-growth-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/2025\/12\/13\/exponential-growth-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Exponential Growth Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Raza Abbas at 3QuarksDaily linked to a post<\/a> on X by Magnus Hambleton which Abbas titled, \u201cWhich Door Would You Choose?\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is a fascinating, fun story about exponential growth and computers, in particular computer arithmetic, which I have annotated a bit for those less familiar with some terminology:<\/p>\n

\u201cI chose the green door ninety-three days ago.<\/p>\n

At the time, it seemed obviously correct. Not even a close call. The red door offered two billion dollars immediately\u2014a sum so large it would solve every material problem I\u2019d ever face, fund any project I could imagine, and still leave enough to give away amounts that would meaningfully change thousands of lives. But two billion is a number. It has a fixed relationship to the economy, to the things money can buy, to the world.<\/p>\n

The green door offered one dollar that doubles every day.<\/p>\n

I remember standing there, doing the mental math. Day 30: about a billion dollars. Day 40: over a trillion. Day 50: a quadrillion. The red door would be surpassed before the first month ended, and after that, the gap would grow incomprehensibly fast. Choosing the red door would be like choosing a ham sandwich over a genie\u2019s lamp because you were hungry right now.<\/p>\n

So I walked through the green door.\u201d<\/p>\n

See an Exponential Growth Story<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Raza Abbas at 3QuarksDaily linked to a post on X by Magnus Hambleton which Abbas titled, \u201cWhich Door Would You Choose?\u201d. This is a fascinating, fun story about exponential growth and computers, in particular computer arithmetic, which I have annotated a bit for those less familiar with some terminology: \u201cI chose the green door ninety-three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[289,38],"class_list":["post-4688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-voices","tag-computers","tag-exponential-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4689,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4688\/revisions\/4689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/josmfs.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}