This piece misunderstands the square-cube law. Put simply, things get heavier much faster than they get bigger or stronger, which limits growth in the real world more than you might think. (The idiot-savants in finance tried to escape this sort of thing by making everything into mathematical derivatives in finance, and we saw how well that worked out in 2009.) The strength of an object is proportional to it's cross-sectional area, which is the square of its size. But the MASS of it is proportional to the cube of its size, which increases much faster.
If the biggest shark you ever saw was 24 feet, you should be fantasizing about seeing one that's 37 feet, because that's already VASTLY bigger than a 24-footer. A 50-footer is about 9 times bigger, and that's ridiculous.
This piece misunderstands the square-cube law. Put simply, things get heavier much faster than they get bigger or stronger, which limits growth in the real world more than you might think. (The idiot-savants in finance tried to escape this sort of thing by making everything into mathematical derivatives in finance, and we saw how well that worked out in 2009.) The strength of an object is proportional to it's cross-sectional area, which is the square of its size. But the MASS of it is proportional to the cube of its size, which increases much faster.
If the biggest shark you ever saw was 24 feet, you should be fantasizing about seeing one that's 37 feet, because that's already VASTLY bigger than a 24-footer. A 50-footer is about 9 times bigger, and that's ridiculous.
This is why there is a HUGE difference between a 30 foot boat and a 40 foot boat.