Why are people bad at recognizing and interpreting exponential growth?

The human senses for intensity (brightness, volume, etc) apply a logarithmic transform before our conscious brain interprets the sensations. That's why we don't develop an intuition for exponential scales in abstract concepts.

Also, exponential growth means that every derivative is exponential, so there is no way to get an approximate single number of magnitude, rate of change, acceleration...

We can take a few derivatives intuitively (velocity, accelerarion/force).

We're not even that good at understanding quadtratic growth, let alone higher polynomials and exponentials.

If you accelerate at 10m/s/s (gravity), how far will you travel in a year (100K seconds)?

Because exponential growth always levels off or goes down in real life (eg logistic)

I've observed an exponential number of people wrongly assuming that infectious diseases exhibit exponential growth.

I don't see where you've concluded that 'people' are bad at 'recognising' exponential growth in relation to Coronavirus. Are you saying people don't understand the concept because that seems like you're projecting hard. If everyone including the media was saying how 'it's just a flu' then how come the news was airing info about it 24/7 and everyone was talking about it constantly and about how it could spread. Everyone was scared of the potential for its growth. I'm thoroughly confused.

I think the correct answer is a version of his first one, that it is unnatural. The human brain is designed to detect the sorts of patterns that are relevant to behavior and intelligent decision making in environment in which human beings evolved, namely foraging societies. There is little relevant exponential growth in that environment, so we don't have the inborn cognitive mechanisms for recognizing and thinking about it.

Seems like our brains aren't optimized for exponential growth because it's not integral to our survival. I could be wrong (not a scientist), but I find it hard to find a situation in which comprehending exponential growth would have been important even 500 years ago.

Relevant XKCD

https://xkcd.com/947/

This comment is not going to discuss the linked article. It will not explain why nor will it address to the subject of the article. I am not qualified to comment on the linked web page and have not even read it. Instead I will write a never ending scroll of words with cartoon data for some reason.