Every time someone brings up the Lindy effect I can't help but roll my eyes. It should be replaced with "Survivorship bias". Almost every technology that humans used that lasted for a long time and no longer used has disappeared and is no longer in used, tautologically. The Lindy effect just seems to be a list of examples of cherry-picked technologies.
Based on your eye rolls and subsequent "explanation", it's clear that you don't understand the Lindy Effect. It's not about listing examples of things that have been around for a while. It's about predicting the likelihood that something will continue to be around given how long it has already been around. This effect is well studied and just a cursory glance at the Wikipedia page will give you some solid sources for more rigorous understanding.
There are no "solid sources" there. Its a bunch of books and articles.
Well-studied? By whom? In what journals?
The Lindy Effect may be true, but based on that Wikipedia article's sources, you can't make a good scientific claim for that being the case. Even if you could, you still run into all the current problems such a nebulous branch of science must contend with, such as the peer review problem and the reproducibility problem.
I think you could mount some interesting objection to the Lindy effect, but this isn't it. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say.
It's not claiming to be a scientific law; it's a heuristic for making decisions. The rest of Taleb's books are also about making decisions, not "being right" (whatever that means).
A concrete example is if I'm writing a blog, and I want people to read my posts in 5 or 10 years. Do I go with the cloud platform that just launched or an older hosting provider? This is a decision people make every day. Of course there are many people who don't care if their blog is readable in 5 years; this isn't a judgement.
The Lindy effect is not about what's "better"; it's about what lasts longer. It's also not making statements about the present, which is what survivorship bias typically means.
Another helpful angle is to consider things that aren't Lindylike. People for example -- we expect older people to die sooner than younger ones, not later. And radioactive nuclei -- we expect their ages to be irrelevant to their expected future longevity.
Yeah there are definitely some subtleties, and they would be interesting to tease out.
Older people obviously will die sooner, but having survived does give you some information. For example, your life expectancy at age 1 is 75 years, but at age 40 it's closer to 79 years.
And if you are writing a blog, it should be written in a way that it could be read 10 years ago if you want it to be read in 10 years if we're following Taleb's thinking.
I can see that, I think the Lindy effect needs some refinement.
My personal take is that there’s a an apex for a particular generation of technology, and that is good forever. A 1930s Farmall tractor is an example of that... there are improved modern replacements, but the 1930 model still does the job near optimally. I would guess that a non trivial number of those tractors will be in use in 2130.
1980s/early 90s minicomputers are similar. Many of these devices are still in use today, and probably could be kept in use for decades to come.
Modern tech is a little harder because we’ve been in a rapid growth phase and the software services based world is more aligned with production than sustainment. I’d bet that trend will change in 20-30 years.
Yeah I just watched some videos that is extremely related by this modern homesteader (and YouTuber! -- apparently he was on the TV show "Alone").
He says "one of the best pieces of advice I've ever gotten is: Don't trade a gun for a snow machine". This is exactly what you're saying, and it's backed up by a lot of experience living without power and water!
He also says "everyone one of us has to decide when to jump ship on a technology"
He says canoes peaked in the 1960's, and you can buy a used one for like $125 that's the same as what you'd buy today for thousands. Same with hand saws. He maintains old saws and chainsaws and uses them:
when you look at any kind of manufactured goods a lot of things have reached their peak and are either poorer quality than they used to be or they're just the same quality as their peak
My favorite example of the quality issue is the “whirly pop”, a stovetop popcorn maker.
The old one my parents had was aluminum with a metal gear. The modern version has been MBAed to death — the gear is plastic, and the lid is so thin that you could probably replicate it with 2 plys of aluminum foil. It costs more and is measurably worse in any dimension.
I recently bought a leaf blower/vac mulcher. Took me way longer than it should to figure out that the difference between the $50 model and the $100 one was that the latter had a metal mulching blade instead of a plastic one, and that the former would likely break as soon as I vacced up a stick that was a bit too big. Thanks random forum poster!
Grummans are great and they're still being made (though not by the original company).
However, for recreational/tripping/whitewater, Royalex-based canoes were better for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately the material is no longer being made because its intended use (Go Carts) didn't take off to the degree planned. The company continued to make it on a more or less breakeven basis but upon a change of ownership the new owner decided to scrap it. There have been one or two efforts to make something equivalent, but AFAIK they haven't panned out.
There are still plenty of well-made fiberglass/Kevlar boats being made but they're much more fragile.
The tractor thing is quite an interesting one( not necessarily with just this particular one): the older tractors ended up being so reliable that people often try to get an older one instead of splashing out on a brand new John Deer and this annoys the manufacturers down deep to their bones.
Of course, you'll also see people arguing that you shouldn't be driving a 10 year old car for the same reason. There's some level of tradeoff where using an older product without the latest safety features makes sense.
It's exactly survivorship bias, but the contextual usage is different. Usually you use survivorship bias to discredit the relevance of an observation. You should think of the lindy effect as survivorship bias as a supporting heuristic for a prediction.
I think the idea is if you randomly sample a range you have weak evidence as to the size of the range. For example if you randomly sampled and got "2" it would be more likely the range had a span of 0 to 4 than 0 to 100,000 though either are possible. On average your random sample will be at the halfway point of the range.
The Lindy effect is the realization that your encounter of something is like a random sample. "How old are chairs when I exist?" "How old are iPhones?"
I think the difference is that survivorship bias applies when the difference between winners and losers is mostly due to chance. I don't think the fact that we use 4-legged chairs and not 5-legged is survivorship bias. I believe the Lindy effect's prediction that 4-legged chairs will be around a long time. Of course, whether it's survivorship or not is case-by-case.
There's a good reason why office chairs have five legs/wheels where regular chairs have only four: safety.
Office chairs have a reclining mechanism. If you ever leaned back too far in an old office chair with four wheels, you would find out the hard way that four isn't enough. It's very easy to lean back comfortably and not realize you've reached the tipping point, fall back and hit your head on the floor or have a close call.
My first jobs long ago had four-wheeled office chairs, so you can guess how I found this out.
The fifth wheel goes a long way to preventing this danger.
You're much less likely to be leaning back in a regular four-legged chair so the front legs come off the ground, and if you do you'll probably be more aware that you are doing something outside the chair's normal mode of use.
And even if offices go out of style, office chairs will likely be around long past then.
