Lindy Effect
Nassim Taleb · 2012
"The longer an idea or object has survived, the longer it is likely to keep surviving."
For non-perishable things — books, technologies, institutions — every extra year of existence increases the expected remaining life. A book still read after 400 years is likely to be read for centuries more. A trendy 6-month-old technology probably won't be.
The mechanism is selection: fragile things die quickly, so anything that survives has already passed harsh filters. Lindy is a prior — it doesn't guarantee survival, but it's a good baseline when you know nothing else. It also warns against the recency bias of assuming new is better; the new hasn't been tested yet.
Applying Lindy to technology choice, which is a safer long-term bet, all else equal?
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The explanation above is written with AI assistance. These are the originals — go to them to check it.
- AntifragilePenguin Random House
Pace Layering
"A durable civilization runs on six layers moving at different speeds — fashion, commerce, infrastructure, governance, culture, nature. The fast layers innovate and get all the attention; the slow layers stabilize and hold all the power. Trouble comes when one layer is forced to move at another's pace."