Punctuated non-equilibrium

This is via the ever insightful Status-Q:

“A couple of months ago I quoted this phrase from Sam Altman:”

‘The hard part of standing on an exponential curve is: when you look backwards, it looks flat, and when you look forward, it looks vertical. And it’s very hard to calibrate how much you are moving because it always looks the same.’

Plotting the future | Status-Q

I talk about a variant of it that I thought Larry Summers used, although when I have tried to check my memory, I turn nothing up. I see two straight lines, one with a shallow gradient close to zero, the other with a steep one, joined at an inflection point. When you are on the shallow line, you never perceive anything is changing. And even when you know things are going to change  — or you wish for change —you have no idea when. At least with an exponential function you can calculate: with a sudden shift, all you can do is pray. An optimist is somebody who wishes the inflection point comes soon. As does the fool.