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The statement is A=>B. A implies B e.g. long life, implies longer life remaining. The moment you negate A, both positive B and negative B, satisfy implication.

by Ygg2 4y ago

The statement is A=>B. A implies B e.g. long life, implies longer life remaining. The moment you negate A, both positive B and negative B, satisfy implication. I.e. you can't claim shorter life implies shorter life remaining. For that to hold you need equivalency, not implication. Here is an example. Rain implies streets are wet. Does no rain implies streets are dry? No. There could be a flood or street cleaning, or a pipe burst.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
You have somehow failed to understand what is being claimed. The Lindy effect says that entities with longer realized lifespans have longer expected future lifespans. In other words, if one thing has been around for 5 years, and another thing has been around for 3 years, then we know three things: 1: The first thing's expected future lifespan is f(5) years. 2: The second thing's expected future lifespan is f(3) years. 3: f(5) is greater than f(3). Etheryte claims, in a gross error, that this does not imply that the expected future lifespan of shorter-lived things is shorter than that of longer-lived things. This is ridiculous; the claim Etheryte denies is a simple restatement of the Lindy effect. For our two objects of ages 5 and 3 years, the "new" claim would tell us the following three things: 1': The expected future lifespan of the first thing is f(5) years. 2': The expected future lifespan of the second thing is f(3) years. 3': f(3) is less than f(5). But 1' is exactly the same claim as 1, 2' is exactly the same claim as 2, and 3' is exactly the same claim as 3. No claim has been negated, only repeated.
- feral 4y ago
  I salute you, Thaumasiotes, great explanation.
- Ygg2 4y ago
  Ok. But then you just proved Lindy effect is at best probabilistic, and most likely survivorship bias. Because it doesn't hold invariant to time. It's not hard to make a counterexample. E.g. when Windows 3.11 existed for several years and Microsoft published Windows 95. If we were to travel back then and use Lindy effect we would get wrong predictions. Because it's such a simple heuristic it only demonstrates one way effect.
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > But then you just proved Lindy effect is at best probabilistic Obviously? Look at the statement of the Lindy effect: > The Lindy effect proposes, simplified, that the longer something has been around, the longer it will probably stay around still. What do you think the word "probably" means?
feral 4y ago
>Does no rain implies streets are dry? It would, if the only thing that could make the streets wet is rain; ie if we were in a limited model where that was true. We're talking in the context of a limited model in this thread. My point was that the statements are equivalent in this model. Alternatively: Imagine we were talking about the size of a pizza and how big a dinner it will lead to. A blog says "wider diameter pizzas generally lead to bigger meals. Narrower diameter pizzas generally lead to smaller meals". The first comment here says "just because wider pizzas implies bigger means doesn't mean narrower pizzas implies smaller meals, the blog has made a logical error!". I reply "in the context of roughly round pizzas the two statements are the same". You then give the example about the rain and streets. Hopefully it's clear that your general logical point isn't relevant to the pizza discussion, where there is a relationship between width and area. Similarly, in the Lindy model, which we are actually discussing, there is a relationship between age and expected lifetime. That relationship is more complex than the pizza one, which confuses things, but hopefully the pizza example makes it clear why there isn't a general logical error here.
- Ygg2 4y ago
  > It would, if the only thing that could make the streets wet is rain; ie if we were in a limited model where that was true We are in a limited model. Many factors affect software lifespan. It's a heuristic at best.

by Ygg2 4y ago

thaumasiotes 4y ago

You have somehow failed to understand what is being claimed. The Lindy effect says that entities with longer realized lifespans have longer expected future lifespans. In other words, if one thing has been around for 5 years, and another thing has been around for 3 years, then we know three things: 1: The first thing's expected future lifespan is f(5) years. 2: The second thing's expected future lifespan is f(3) years. 3: f(5) is greater than f(3). Etheryte claims, in a gross error, that this does not imply that the expected future lifespan of shorter-lived things is shorter than that of longer-lived things. This is ridiculous; the claim Etheryte denies is a simple restatement of the Lindy effect. For our two objects of ages 5 and 3 years, the "new" claim would tell us the following three things: 1': The expected future lifespan of the first thing is f(5) years. 2': The expected future lifespan of the second thing is f(3) years. 3': f(3) is less than f(5). But 1' is exactly the same claim as 1, 2' is exactly the same claim as 2, and 3' is exactly the same claim as 3. No claim has been negated, only repeated.

feral 4y ago
I salute you, Thaumasiotes, great explanation.
Ygg2 4y ago
Ok. But then you just proved Lindy effect is at best probabilistic, and most likely survivorship bias. Because it doesn't hold invariant to time. It's not hard to make a counterexample. E.g. when Windows 3.11 existed for several years and Microsoft published Windows 95. If we were to travel back then and use Lindy effect we would get wrong predictions. Because it's such a simple heuristic it only demonstrates one way effect.
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > But then you just proved Lindy effect is at best probabilistic Obviously? Look at the statement of the Lindy effect: > The Lindy effect proposes, simplified, that the longer something has been around, the longer it will probably stay around still. What do you think the word "probably" means?

feral 4y ago

>Does no rain implies streets are dry? It would, if the only thing that could make the streets wet is rain; ie if we were in a limited model where that was true. We're talking in the context of a limited model in this thread. My point was that the statements are equivalent in this model. Alternatively: Imagine we were talking about the size of a pizza and how big a dinner it will lead to. A blog says "wider diameter pizzas generally lead to bigger meals. Narrower diameter pizzas generally lead to smaller meals". The first comment here says "just because wider pizzas implies bigger means doesn't mean narrower pizzas implies smaller meals, the blog has made a logical error!". I reply "in the context of roughly round pizzas the two statements are the same". You then give the example about the rain and streets. Hopefully it's clear that your general logical point isn't relevant to the pizza discussion, where there is a relationship between width and area. Similarly, in the Lindy model, which we are actually discussing, there is a relationship between age and expected lifetime. That relationship is more complex than the pizza one, which confuses things, but hopefully the pizza example makes it clear why there isn't a general logical error here.

Ygg2 4y ago
> It would, if the only thing that could make the streets wet is rain; ie if we were in a limited model where that was true We are in a limited model. Many factors affect software lifespan. It's a heuristic at best.