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林迪效应:存续时间本身提供了一种信息

对易碎品,年龄通常是减分项。十岁的车比一岁的车离报废更近。对观念、书籍和技艺这类不会自然衰老的东西,方向反过来。一本已经流传五百年的书,明年仍被阅读的概率,通常高于刚出版的畅销书。

存续时间提供了一种压缩后的信息。我们未必知道一项传统经历过哪些具体冲击,但它能够走到今天,至少说明它没有在这些冲击中消失。删减比增添更可靠 从行动上删除已知的坏东西,Lindy 则让时间完成一部分筛选。

活得久也可能来自权力、惯性和锁定。一项制度延续数百年,不能据此断定它公平。火鸡问题 还保留了另一个限制:对象如果藏着预设的死期,过去的幸存记录会在最后一天突然失效。

同时对Lindy有了更加深刻的理解,时间之神的人间行走,轻易解决了世界被乌龟驮着,下面被一只更大的乌龟驮着,以此循环的meta-meta-meta问题。that is, 时间是最终的衡量者,那些能够在长时间段生存下来的非生命事物(想法,公司,书籍等等)也就通过lindy的考验,且每多存在一天,接下来继续存在的可能性就进一步增加。 lindy的起源是nyc的一家deli店,可惜之前不知道,之后会去朝圣的。 然而: Lindy deli在skin in the game这本书发布的当天关门倒闭了哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈哈

Skin in the Game》原文:

Lindy is a deli in New York, now a tourist trap, that proudly claims to be famous for its cheesecake, but in fact has been known for fifty or so years by physicists and mathematicians thanks to the heuristic that developed there. Actors who hung out there gossiping about other actors discovered that Broadway shows that lasted for, say, one hundred days, had a future life expectancy of a hundred more. For those that lasted two hundred days, two hundred more. The heuristic became known as the Lindy effect.

Effectively Lindy answers the age-old meta-questions: Who will judge the expert? Who will guard the guard? (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?) Who will judge the judges? Well, survival will.

That which is “Lindy” is what ages in reverse, i.e., its life expectancy lengthens with time, conditional on survival.

Note that thanks to Lindy, no expert is the final expert anymore and we do not need meta-experts judging the expertise of experts one rank below them. We solve the “turtles all the way down” problem.*1 Fragility is the expert, hence time and survival.

The pre-Socratic thinker Periander of Corinth wrote, more than twenty-five hundred years ago: Use laws that are old but food that is fresh.

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