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> I hope that at some point we'll stop sacralizing things because they are old. The Lindy effect is in play though. People don't consider The Brothers Karamazo
by kuhewa 4y ago
> I hope that at some point we'll stop sacralizing things because they are old.
The Lindy effect is in play though. People don't consider The Brothers Karamazov classical canon merely because it is 140 years old, because there were many other books published at the same time. There's typically a reason why particular works survive to have cultural relevance today.
In the same way house construction wasn't by and large more durable 700 years ago, but the houses from 700 years ago that still stand today are very sturdy.
- carabiner 4y agoWhy are people saying Lindy over survivorship bias these days?
- stephc_int13 4y agoI think those two are related, but survivorship bias seems more random.
- celeritascelery 4y agoThey are unrelated things. The lindy effect says the future lifespan is proportional to how long it’s been around already (The Bible writings have been around 2000 years, so it will probably be around for another 2000 years). Survivorship bias is saying that things that survive are representative of the whole sample (saying the The Brothers Karamazov was typical for literature of that period without other evidence would be an example of survivorship bias).
- kuhewa 4y agoSimilar but not the same concept. Lindy is that age predicts life expectancy for non-perishable items. Survivorship bias has nothing to do with the future. I could have used survivorship bias in that post and lost little, but the implication is that Dostoyevsky is highly likely to have more staying power than a randomly selected novel published 142 years later.