On Linear Vs Exponential Growth
Blink and you'll miss it
When was the first time you realized the future had arrived? Was it when your youngest graduated, or your retirement was weeks away? The first time you used an iPhone? Was it, like me, your life’s minutia being reduced by half with the use of AI?
We’ve all had those wide-eye moments, when we realized life was moving fast. The world doesn’t move in straight lines—it leaps.
Linear vs. Exponential Change: The Experts are Wrong
Linear change is slow, predictable—one foot after another. This is the model of thinking that most tech and policy experts operate under.
Exponential change is a hockey stick—slow, slow, then suddenly vertical.
Most people (and experts!) default to linear thinking, even as the world bends.
There are those among us that see the big picture. The abundant picture.
, in The Case for Nukes, is one of the rare voices who actually gets this.In fact, he taught me about this way back in my NASA days as a baby analyst. He showed charts about human progress and compared them to the ideas of the time.
Zubrin and I at one of his life changing case for space presentations
He argues that when it comes to energy and progress, we need to stop thinking in straight lines. Zubrin’s vision of “energy abundance” is not just about keeping the lights on; it’s the key that unlocks economic freedom, innovation, and even gender equality because exponential access to energy liberates whole societies from scarcity and drudgery. His argument is that the real existential threat isn’t climate change or technological disruption, but the old, linear scarcity mindset that keeps us small and afraid. As above so below.
This thinking in our own life and subsequently at a societal level keeps us small or allows us to exponentially change.
Zubrin is a champion for the leap, and so am I. He sees that when freedom and abundant energy come together, progress doesn’t just walk forward—it takes off like a rocket. :)
Innovation “Schedules” Are Fictions:
People love making timelines: “AI will be here by 2040,” “Fusion is always 30 years away.” “Mars is always 30 years away.”
But chill because, historical examples of overnight shifts include:
The iPhone launch: In 2006, BlackBerry was king—by 2009, everyone had a touchscreen.
The internet’s mainstreaming: 1993, most people didn’t use email; by 2000, everyone did.
COVID-19: Remote work and telehealth “overnight.”
AI: GPT-2 to GPT-4 leap shocked even the experts. When "AI 2041" was published in September 2021, lots of its predictions about advanced language models, AI creativity, and personalized digital assistants were meant to feel futuristic set in distant 2041 lol. But just months after publication, the real-world releases of GPT-3, DALL·E, Stable Diffusion, and early GPT-4 previews made some of those predictions look quaint or even behind the times. Bro.
Nuclear fusion: Decades of “someday,” then in 2022, news breaks of net energy gain. Cool, cool. Worldwide energy for the lowly meager cost of infrastructure. Got it.
Why We Get It Wrong:
Human brains are hardwired to expect tomorrow to look like today. We’re also scaredy cats because of evolution.
Institutions, governments, and “experts” often reinforce this—cautious projections feel safe. I am here to tell you if you do not know that safety is an illusion.
By the time consensus forms, the world has already shifted. And this is why people hate the government, and teenagers hate parents. Obsolete, the lot of them! Or at least a little behind.
Recap: Fusion: 60+ years of “always 30 years away”—but suddenly, real breakthrough. AI: A book on AI published in 2021 now reads like a time capsule—predictions already obsolete.
The pace of change is now itself changing. Not only are things speeding up—they’re speeding up at an accelerating rate. It’s not just that the world is different every decade; it’s that the gap between world-changing moments is shrinking, year by year.
In the 20th century, you might see a new technology every generation—radio, television, computers, the internet—each one taking decades to spread. Now, entire industries appear, evolve, and disrupt themselves in the span of a few months. See Fusion and AI examples above. Electric Cars. Reusable Rockets.
The “exponential” part isn’t just about raw speed—it’s about compounding effects. Each new leap enables even faster leaps after it, like an endless staircase where each step doubles in height and frequency. The chessboard analogy (shown well here by youtuber Vihan Chelliah) shows how exponential growth sneaks up: place one grain of rice on the first square and double it on each next square. By the 64th square, you need more than all the rice ever produced—over 18 quintillion grains. Exponential change is sneaky: for the first half of the chessboard, the numbers are modest, but then things explode. This is the “second half of the chessboard” problem—by the time most people notice, the numbers have grown so large and the pace so rapid, it’s almost impossible to catch up. This is awesome because we’re living in the curbs elbow!
This is why linear thinking—projecting today’s changes forward in a straight line—fails so spectacularly. When the curve itself is curving, all bets are off. We’re living in the curve’s elbow.
It’s not just that the future is coming faster. It’s that the definition of “fast” keeps moving out from under us.
The Danger of Straight Lines:
The real risk with linear thinking isn’t just being wrong—it’s missing massive opportunities (or getting blindsided by threats). Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near, shows how exponential progress in computing power caught whole industries by surprise and those who anticipated the curve (think early internet investors, first AI entrepreneurs) reaped outsized rewards. Peter Diamandis writes in Bold about how “exponential” thinkers transformed fields from medicine to media almost overnight. White hot, right?
When you expect steady progress, exponential change looks impossible—until it’s inevitable.
The world’s biggest opportunities go to those willing to adapt, leap, and reimagine what’s possible. The future belongs to those who watch for the curve—not the straight line.
So What Do We Do?
Stay awake: Pay attention to edges, not just the center.
Embrace the leap: Learn, adapt, expect discontinuity. Don’t just expect gradual shifts—anticipate sudden, game-changing leaps. As @TimUrban1 puts it in his (my favorite of all time) blog Wait But Why, “the leap” is where tomorrow’s biggest changes—and fortunes—are made. The world’s fastest learners, from Elon Musk (leaping between rockets, cars, and AI, him being a friggin megalomaniac aside) to Cathy Wood (betting Ark Invest on unproven trends), win by leaning into uncertainty rather than running from it.
Ask Better Questions
As a Spiritual Futurist, the most important question for the me, is not “What’s coming next?” but “What new potentials am I not even seeing because I’m still thinking in straight lines?” I ask that question every day and I am answered… every day. With insane magic. Songs, money, relationships, surroundings. The perfect Oblique Strategy card falling out of the deck. (
Brian Eno changed me, too.)Exponential change isn’t just a tech story—it’s a consciousness story. Manifestation teachers like Neville Goddard, Lacy Phillips (To Be Magnetic), and Joe Dispenza all point to this: the external world leaps forward when the internal world does. When you meditate, visualize, or set intentions, you’re quantum leaping—shifting your energy so rapidly that what used to take years can unfold in weeks, or even moments. The so-called “quantum leap” is just exponential growth but on the inside.
Meditation sharpens your intuition for the curve. It allows you to sense the invisible uptick, the inner nudge telling you something is about to move.
Manifestation isn’t about slow, steady improvement but “the jump,” the miraculous, sudden outcome that materializes when your mindset finally tips into alignment. Ahhhh, so nice.
Ask the esoteric question: “What if my reality can transform as suddenly as technology?” “What if my old beliefs are keeping me on square 8 of the chessboard, when Spirit is trying to launch me to square 63?” When you ask questions, you are given answers, that’s how it works. I don’t make the rules.
In practical terms:
If you meditate, you already know that you get clear signs when you’re toe dipping in the exponential zone—like lightning-strike synchronicities, wild gut hunches/mind-bending punches, and sudden “open door” moments that seem to appear out of thin air but perfectly in-time.
Don’t daydream about what’s reasonable. Meditate on the impossible and watch reality throw you curveballs you never saw coming.
Want to write a book? Visualize an interview with Dave Letterman or whoever talking to you about it.
Want to have a baby? Imagine her teenage years going smoothly. God is an out of the box thinker. He made you! Think about that!
Want to be rich? Imagine watching your savings account be flush with money you forget you had because you’re too busy in actual abundance, which is alignment, sharing your gifts, freedom and relational wealth, not money. (Money is energy and you can get it all kinds of ways, but when you get it the unaligned way, it will NOT make you happy or free… just… I promise.)
Exponential magic doesn’t knock gently. It comes with wide-eyes, goosebumps, déjà vu, and doors you didn’t know existed swinging wide. Pay attention to that feeling of holy shit, is this really happening? That’s the future, arriving ahead of schedule.
…Can you feel it?
The takeaway:
Linear questions keep you small; exponential, spiritual questions open the field to miracles. If technology can double overnight, so can consciousness, opportunity, and your own inner life. The only real limit is your willingness to believe in the curve—and then ride it, soul-first.