Inf%

When I type the first few words of any article, something incredible happens. Wanna see?

Here's this article before I wrote any words:

Here's this article again, after I've written the first word:

When

Do you see it?

cue intensive squinting 👀

The ratio of new words to old words is 1:0! This article has expanded its wordcount by a factor of infinity! An infinity% increase!
If this rate is sustained for the next.. idk, hour, I will have an article so huge, the whole of the internet won't be sufficient to contain it! In fact, any (non-zero, positive) multiple of this rate would be sufficient to do that! Brace, you cloud servers, and tremble at the prospect of my article! 😂

...Of course, it never works out that way. By the time I write the next word, like so...

When I

...the ratio falls back down to the non-extended real numbers, taking the scant value of 2:1, an increase by 100%. A doubling is still impressive, but not as impressive as the infinity that could have been had when we were still dividing by zero...

BTW, if you are curious about the full article I wrote, you can see the full article, here.

As a motivational tool

Highlighting inf%, zero-to-one jumps in progress is great when talking to demotivated artists...

Going from a blank canvas/page/document to one filled with lines, words, and music is something amazing and incredible! You just brought meaning to the blanks! Go you; you are incredible!

..Yes, yes, of course, the draft is not as good as it will be when finished, and even then it would be far from the ideal you imagined at the start. But still—you cannot edit something you have not drafted first, and you cannot finish a painting without starting to paint; and that start is the largest percentage jump in progress you'll ever see.

The idea you had used to be much farther away from reality. Now, even in the imperfect form of a sketch, it can be improved, reasoned about, evaluated, or even shared. The idea is not longer stuck in your mind. You have brought your idea to freedom!

You have brought that idea to life. ✨

And as a person who enjoys ideas¹... thank you! 😊

As a way to measure progress

That said, inf% rhetoric falls apart when used as a tool to measure progress beyond the first draft.

Like, sure, you increased the amount of graphite deposited on the sheet of paper by 50%... but what does that mean?
Did you shade/color in the last 33% of a gorgeous pencil drawing? Or did you make the third circle of your initial sketch?

Beyond the first draft, it's much more practical to track progress in absolute units; say, nanolightseconds of pencil trace deposited (~30cm), or microcenturies of creative time committed (~1h).
At least then you can express the difference between a tiny bit of progress done before breakfast, and a huge bit of progress done late at night 😅 😁

As a way to compare progress

Inf% rhetoric falls apart even worse when used to compare the progress of different ideas.

Say, a self-acclaimed entrepreneur (for some definition of that word..) creates ten startups over the course of an year.
Each of them is a inf% jump! They are making so much progress on so many different fronts! It's amazing what the spark of new ideas can achieve!

...Have they made society infinite% better off, ten times over?

Not at all.
At those timescales, only a few are impacted by the new businesses, and society is a bit worse off after spending resources on ten bad ideas. Or maybe they are good ideas——but if those are ten "modern" startups that rely on grants and have no customers, we can't even tell whether the ideas are good or not!

But more to the point, even absolute units fail to compare progress between projects well.

If I write 300 words on one article over 2 hours and 1000 words on another article also in 2 hours...
Did I make more progress on the first or on the second article?

Who knows! If the first article is a research-heavy, thought-provoking piece, 300 words there might represent a lot more progress than 1000 words on a rambling, journal-like article. And if both articles are roughly equally easy to write, then the 1000 words can be said to be more progress than the 300 words!

Comparing progress between ideas is hard.

And, comparing progress between different people is even harder.

So, don't compare progress. Or if you do, don't compare progress based on inf-percent-based metrics (they started reading 50 books this year!), nor based on absolute-unit-based metrics (they finished reading 4000 pages this year!). Find a better metric for it to make any sense (:

In conclusion

Talking about inf% jumps makes sense when you want to tell someone about how amazing it is to bring new ideas to life. It is a measure of individual progress on a particular project, when starting out.

Using percentage increases to discuss progress on an idea is fun, but the base for the percentage changes as you make progress, thus making your percentages incomparable.
Expressing things in absolute units can at least make the math make sense, when measuring individual progress on a particular project.

Using any units to discuss progress between different ideas or between different people is nearly impossible. Circumstances are different, difficulty is different, impact is different, and comparison only kills the joy of doing something well.

So, use progress to cheer others up. Don't use progress to bring yourself down. Thanks for coming to my slightly-rambly article.

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