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This is correct, let me take a crack at explaining why. The Lindy effect is named after a restaurant, Lindy's, which ironically closed recently. If we were to

This is correct, let me take a crack at explaining why. The Lindy effect is named after a restaurant, Lindy's, which ironically closed recently. If we were to take it as invertible, we would have to conclude that a brand-new restaurant, which opened an hour ago, is most likely to shut down one hour from now. This is an obvious absurdity: if we wish to speculate on the longevity of new things, we can't use the Lindy effect to do so. It's a good heuristic for betting that something will continue, it's a bad heuristic for betting something won't.

bdowling 4y ago
> ... a brand-new restaurant, which opened an hour ago, is most likely to shut down one hour from now. A new restaurant that opened one hour ago existed for months during its planning stages. That restaurant will probably not survive its first few months of business.
lm28469 4y ago
> most likely to shut down one hour from now. Yeah but in an hour it most likely shut down in two hours /s I really don't get the whole argument over this definition, to me it sounds like a funny observation more than a law of the Universe.
- samatman 4y ago
  It's useful if you're trying to decide which is going to last longer, Harvard, or Bob's Quality Education Mill est. 2022. It's not useful if you're trying to decide whether Bob's Education Mill will last longer than the state-funded community college opened in the same year, there are plenty of other heuristics which we might use there, but not this one.
osigurdson 4y ago
Reading through the wiki page, the Lindy effect is not so much about the the restaurant itself. It was initially about a comic's ability to stay relevant by not having too many appearances then later seemingly co-opted by Mandelbrot and Taleb to mean what it does now. Lindy's law is a strange one for sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect#cite_note-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect#cite_note-6 https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/1964-goldman.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/1964-goldman.pdf

bdowling 4y ago

> ... a brand-new restaurant, which opened an hour ago, is most likely to shut down one hour from now. A new restaurant that opened one hour ago existed for months during its planning stages. That restaurant will probably not survive its first few months of business.

lm28469 4y ago

> most likely to shut down one hour from now. Yeah but in an hour it most likely shut down in two hours /s I really don't get the whole argument over this definition, to me it sounds like a funny observation more than a law of the Universe.

samatman 4y ago
It's useful if you're trying to decide which is going to last longer, Harvard, or Bob's Quality Education Mill est. 2022. It's not useful if you're trying to decide whether Bob's Education Mill will last longer than the state-funded community college opened in the same year, there are plenty of other heuristics which we might use there, but not this one.

osigurdson 4y ago

Reading through the wiki page, the Lindy effect is not so much about the the restaurant itself. It was initially about a comic's ability to stay relevant by not having too many appearances then later seemingly co-opted by Mandelbrot and Taleb to mean what it does now. Lindy's law is a strange one for sure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect#cite_note-6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect#cite_note-6 https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/1964-goldman.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/statistics/1964-goldman.pdf