Two Mind Bending Riddles to Change Your Brain

The hyperconnectivity of the world, largely fueled by the internet, has challenged our human capacity for understanding, specifically when it comes to scale. Consider this classic mental experiment:

1. Imagine a three sided shape in your mind. 
2. Now, imagine a five sided shape in your mind.
3. Finally, try to imagine a thirteen sided shape in your mind. 

Chances are you aced the triangle and the pentagon without much trouble (whether you knew the pentagon’s name). I bet things were fuzzy, however, when you tried to picture thirteen sides. Heck, as I’m writing this, I still can’t do it. Now, in the fast paced world we live in, numbers like three, five, and thirteen are relatively miniscule. 

Let’s try one more experiment. I’ll give you a fact for reference and then ask you a quiz question:

• FACT: 1 million seconds is about 12.5 days. 
• QUESTION: how long is 1 billion seconds? 

I’m sure the correct answer (31.5 years) didn’t roll off the tongue. This is what I mean about the mind bending reality of life at scale.

Now, one could read all this as doom and gloom. Scale could mean runaway problems that us meger humans can’t keep up with. Or, it could mean an incomprehensible opportunity. As much as we don’t understand scale, it also means we don’t understand what’s actually possible for each of us. That’s the good news.