Wired for equal steps

Catch a thrown stone and you are solving a smooth path. Walk home and each step is about the last step. On the savanna, the far side of the globe did not matter. Near danger did. Local and linear kept people alive.

That wiring is still in the yard. Chen treats next year’s dock as this year’s sheet plus a little. It feels responsible. It is how a ball is caught.

Exponential progress is rare in the world a body grew up in. Lesson 1’s fog was one of the few times the math shows up in your eyes, and even that is light fading, not a harvest that doubles. So a multi-year freeze does not feel dangerous on award day. The paper looks like the world.

Once you can see the wiring, a cancelled night run is not a surprise weather event. It is what a linear mind writes into a contract.

The tempting mistake is to call the freeze stupidity. It is skill at the wrong game.

That is what lets you ask whether anyone measured a doubling you can actually point at.