Earlier quoted context omitted.
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By what metric? The Lindy effect is concerned with survival, which is affected to a large degree by, in this case, memetic fitness, which these books have in spades.
By the quality of the book.
The Lindy Effect
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: The Lindy Effect
#22It seems like the Lindy effect for a positive real number valued ramdom variable X, is the following identity E[X | X >= a] = 2 * a
It's more likely described by the non-linear portion corresponding to
the first stage of the Bathtub Curve [0] we use in engineering.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathtub_curve
Most complex but faulted things fail very early.
Re: The Lindy Effect
#23I like to use the Lindy effect as an everyday heuristic, quite often for choosing what books to read. That is: if a book has been highly relevant, say, for the past 20 years, it may have considerable relevance 20 years from today as well. Conclusion: I will think about buying that physical book for my home library, so my children would have a carefully-filtered collection of "classics" from many eras by the time they…
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I believe K&R is a wonderful introduction to C - "wonderful" as in "let's open the editor and try this". It's well written, simple, and you are left with the feeling that someone just gave you a Jedi weapon.
It took a while for us as a community to realize that such a Jedi weapon can easily slice your fingers off, because before the internet the worst that would happen is "it crashed again" but that was kind of normal.
Re: The Lindy Effect
#24I like to use the Lindy effect as an everyday heuristic, quite often for choosing what books to read. That is: if a book has been highly relevant, say, for the past 20 years, it may have considerable relevance 20 years from today as well. Conclusion: I will think about buying that physical book for my home library, so my children would have a carefully-filtered collection of "classics" from many eras by the time they…
There's an implicit value judgment there though: would you stick a book that exhibited the Lindy effect even if you fundamentally disapproved of it. For example: the King James English Bible is surely very high on the Lindyness scale, massively influential, and on that basis deserves a place on every educated reader's library: but its also the source of bigotry, suffering and death for thousands of people. Do you sto…
Yes definitely. Currently in four languages, for the record.
Re: The Lindy Effect
#25I like to use the Lindy effect as an everyday heuristic, quite often for choosing what books to read. That is: if a book has been highly relevant, say, for the past 20 years, it may have considerable relevance 20 years from today as well. Conclusion: I will think about buying that physical book for my home library, so my children would have a carefully-filtered collection of "classics" from many eras by the time they…
There's an implicit value judgment there though: would you stick a book that exhibited the Lindy effect even if you fundamentally disapproved of it. For example: the King James English Bible is surely very high on the Lindyness scale, massively influential, and on that basis deserves a place on every educated reader's library: but its also the source of bigotry, suffering and death for thousands of people. Do you sto…
Yes. I'd stock Koran too. Satanic Verses by Rushdie would also be included. If I can have access to Mein Kampf, to the library it goes.
Re: The Lindy Effect
#26I like to use the Lindy effect as an everyday heuristic, quite often for choosing what books to read. That is: if a book has been highly relevant, say, for the past 20 years, it may have considerable relevance 20 years from today as well. Conclusion: I will think about buying that physical book for my home library, so my children would have a carefully-filtered collection of "classics" from many eras by the time they…
There's an implicit value judgment there though: would you stick a book that exhibited the Lindy effect even if you fundamentally disapproved of it. For example: the King James English Bible is surely very high on the Lindyness scale, massively influential, and on that basis deserves a place on every educated reader's library: but its also the source of bigotry, suffering and death for thousands of people. Do you sto…
What someone says is the justification for their actions, and what actually is the reason for their actions are often different things.
Re: The Lindy Effect
#27I like to use the Lindy effect as an everyday heuristic, quite often for choosing what books to read. That is: if a book has been highly relevant, say, for the past 20 years, it may have considerable relevance 20 years from today as well. Conclusion: I will think about buying that physical book for my home library, so my children would have a carefully-filtered collection of "classics" from many eras by the time they…
There's an implicit value judgment there though: would you stick a book that exhibited the Lindy effect even if you fundamentally disapproved of it. For example: the King James English Bible is surely very high on the Lindyness scale, massively influential, and on that basis deserves a place on every educated reader's library: but its also the source of bigotry, suffering and death for thousands of people. Do you sto…
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Re: The Lindy Effect
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an implicit value judgment there though: would you stick a book that exhibited the Lindy effect even if you fundamentally disapproved of it. For example: the King James English Bible is surely very high on the Lindyness scale, massively influential, and on that basis deserves a place on every educated reader's library: but its also the source of bigotry, suffering and death for thousands of people. Do you sto…
Yes. I'd stock Koran too. Satanic Verses by Rushdie would also be included. If I can have access to Mein Kampf, to the library it goes.
> Mein Kampf
While the author was very influential, I'm not sure if the book itself relevant.
Re: The Lindy Effect
#29It seems like the Lindy effect for a positive real number valued ramdom variable X, is the following identity E[X | X >= a] = 2 * a
> E[X | X >= a] = 2 * a
Is it possible to derive the maximum entropy probability distribution subject to that constraint?
Re: The Lindy Effect
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an implicit value judgment there though: would you stick a book that exhibited the Lindy effect even if you fundamentally disapproved of it. For example: the King James English Bible is surely very high on the Lindyness scale, massively influential, and on that basis deserves a place on every educated reader's library: but its also the source of bigotry, suffering and death for thousands of people. Do you sto…
I definitely would stock the Bible, yes -- with the argument that Western societies and cultures are riddled with biblical metaphors and everyday customs, so it does make sense for the kids to be familiar with them. Not sure about stocking e.g. Mein Kampf, though. This one I would probably pass, due to disgust towards what the Nazis did. From another angle, I might be "brainwashed" here -- by the cultural meme that t…
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