[fats_tromino]

This is the most succinct and clearest explanation of what's going on. I see this discussed a lot when people talk about the curse of dimensionality. Another very simple example is the example of a n-hypercube with edge length 1/2 embedded in the unit n-hypercube. As n increases, the volume of the unit hypercube is constant (1), whereas the volume of the smaller hypercube is decreasing at an exponential rate.