5 ms·

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

by typon 6y ago

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.

TaupeRanger 6y ago
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.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  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.
bo1024 6y ago
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.
- nayuki 6y ago
  But every standard office chair with wheels is 5-legged.
  - Kliment 6y ago
    Yep, and those are a recent development and much less likely to last than 4-legged chairs. So are, for that matter, offices.
    - Stratoscope 6y ago
      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.
Spooky23 6y ago
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.
- cosmodisk 6y ago
  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.
  - chubot 6y ago
    Actually the same video I referenced above has a section on tractors! https://youtu.be/BH15Kua5P1Y?t=829 https://youtu.be/BH15Kua5P1Y?t=829 He says it cost me $100 to get the best that has ever been made, and it's backed up by a lot of experience living off grid
    - hattmall 6y ago
      You may want to specify "lawn tractor" as that's not really what I was picturing when you say tractor.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    Yeah and it is tragic in some ways as the thing missing from the 1930s gear is safety features. Many preventable deaths happen every year as a result.
ALittleLight 6y ago
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?"
chubot 6y ago
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.
- repsilat 6y ago
  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.
  - chubot 6y ago
    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. e.g. https://www.annuityadvantage.com/resources/life-expectancy-tables/ https://www.annuityadvantage.com/resources/life-expectancy-t...
  - dmingod666 6y ago
    Not if you are looking at motorcycle accidents data of older and younger people.
  - nvoid 6y ago
    Isn't this handled by the fact Lindy-like things have to be non-perishable like ideas or technology?
- 6y ago
p1necone 6y ago
Except the Lindy effect does hold even when you use it as a predictor of the future, rather than just analyzing historical data.
dnautics 6y ago
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.
resoluteteeth 6y ago
Survivorship bias is when you draw conclusions about all members of a certain class of things based only on the surviving examples. The Lindy effect is a theory about the surviving examples specifically.

by typon 6y ago

TaupeRanger 6y ago

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.

cbozeman 6y ago
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.

bo1024 6y ago

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.

nayuki 6y ago
But every standard office chair with wheels is 5-legged.
- Kliment 6y ago
  Yep, and those are a recent development and much less likely to last than 4-legged chairs. So are, for that matter, offices.
  - Stratoscope 6y ago
    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.

Spooky23 6y ago

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.

cosmodisk 6y ago
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.
- chubot 6y ago
  Actually the same video I referenced above has a section on tractors! https://youtu.be/BH15Kua5P1Y?t=829 https://youtu.be/BH15Kua5P1Y?t=829 He says it cost me $100 to get the best that has ever been made, and it's backed up by a lot of experience living off grid
  - hattmall 6y ago
    You may want to specify "lawn tractor" as that's not really what I was picturing when you say tractor.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Yeah and it is tragic in some ways as the thing missing from the 1930s gear is safety features. Many preventable deaths happen every year as a result.

ALittleLight 6y ago

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?"

chubot 6y ago

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.

repsilat 6y ago
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.
- chubot 6y ago
  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. e.g. https://www.annuityadvantage.com/resources/life-expectancy-tables/ https://www.annuityadvantage.com/resources/life-expectancy-t...
- dmingod666 6y ago
  Not if you are looking at motorcycle accidents data of older and younger people.
- nvoid 6y ago
  Isn't this handled by the fact Lindy-like things have to be non-perishable like ideas or technology?
6y ago

p1necone 6y ago

Except the Lindy effect does hold even when you use it as a predictor of the future, rather than just analyzing historical data.

dnautics 6y ago

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.

resoluteteeth 6y ago

Survivorship bias is when you draw conclusions about all members of a certain class of things based only on the surviving examples. The Lindy effect is a theory about the surviving examples specifically.