DOES YOUR THINKING SCALE?

July 3rd, 2025

Reflecting on the fact that Infinite Books just released my book, White Mirror, a collection of sci-fi short stories, I realize that at no point in my past did I ever plan or intend to become a sci-fi writer. So how did that happen? Putting aside the entire personal backstory of tortured, starving artist that encapsulates a formative part of my past, it really boils down to a kind of cognitive quark that I believe has been with me since childhood.

If you're lucky enough to have children in your life in any capacity, you're likely familiar with the somewhat jarring experience of having a kid's current world of play explained to you, often with some drawing, or lego construction, or cardboard contraption as the center piece from which this bespoke world is inspired. If you've put any braincells to work trying to analyze what is going on with a chid in this state, you realize it's a blueprint for a skill that so many adults lack, and flounder as a result of that paucity. 

The kid starts putting random things together. Suddenly they see something in the little grouping of chaos: pareidolia occurs. They associate something with the random shape and suddenly it gains meaning. They add to their creation to evoke a stronger connection to the association. A feedback loop has been born, and mind, imagination, and the real world are locked in a little virtuous cycle of building and editing: of creation. 

But the implications always go beyond the physical object. There must be a bespoke world - a specific situation, imagined, in which this particular creation has a more sensible home. If it's a rocket, well then it must also have a launchpad somewhere. Perhaps that also needs to be built. And of course it's got a destination, and a trajectory which may take kid, spaceship and that bespoke world across the room to an adult, to whom all of this must be explained so they can join the world. 

"Do you like my spaceship?" is a proxy question. The true answer is irrelevant. The real question being asked is 

"Do you want to explore the world I just created?"

Many adults are often too busy, or too boring, or both, to confront that immersive question honestly, and with legitimate courage. I'm not calling this section of adults cowards. What's really going on is a form of ineptitude, and no one is really at fault here. Most adults have lost the ability to extrapolate - to scale their thinking.

In the tech world "scale" refers to growing to a particular TAM - Total Addressable Market. This is...fine. But it still represents thinking that has been kneecapped: literally hobbled, knees-destroyed via shotgun.  "Scale" in the tech world means "extrapolate ramifications of product up to a point." This is a pretty unfortunate form of horse blinders.

That kid with the rocket ship jury-rigged from toilet paper tubes and tape is a true scaled thinker, unhampered by the limitations of TAM. And the talent of a child boils down to a simple cognitive framework that can be encapsulated by a single question, but a question nonetheless that child never actually asks themselves:

If this is the situation, then what are the implications?

The stories and worlds that children spin up are elaborate ramifications of tiny seeds of curiosity and creativity. And that question is iterative. Each time you answer it, the situation changes, which prompts the question again: Now that the situation has changed due to implications just considered, what are the new implications?

This is simply the creative process. Whether you are building a tech product to sell to a large TAM, or you are a writer in the middle of a story, or you are a child looking at a toilet paper roll and seeing something more than a toilet paper roll.

Thinking scales through implication and ramification. It's the ability to think about second and third order effects. A couple of examples: 

-If driving becomes fully automated, the death rate from automobile accidents will plummet. This means available organs for organ transplants will essentially drop to zero.

-If we solve aging, and people become functionally immortal, what happens to marriage as an institution? If it's based on "until death do us part", what happens now? Do people start to consider term limits to marriages?

-If humanoid robots become as ubiquitous and useful as it seems they are poised to be, does that nullify the fertility crisis, meaning we can have a much smaller population without civilizational collapse? Does anti-aging also contribute a solution to the fertility crisis?

-If food production becomes 100% automated, does the cost of food drop to zero? What happens to the economy if food becomes free? Perhaps UBI is a red herring and is completely unnecessary if food is free. Perhaps the status game remains the engine of the economy, but it's opt-in, and most people can opt-out and live more fulfilling lives?

These are just a couple of examples. They are fair questions based on very real initiatives that are being taken up by very smart people with a lot of money behind them. Many of the first order effects are fairly obvious, and yet few people seem to be thinking of nascent technologies in terms of these simply questions. The ability to scale in thought is the ability to extrapolate. In today's age of increasing rates of progress, it's virtually impossible to consider ramifications without accidentally becoming a sci-fi writer.