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The Lindy Effect

arxiv.org

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Re: The Lindy Effect

#31

Post by dlkf »

adamnemecek wrote: post #11
marttt wrote: post #9

I 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…

[flagged]

I love that someone has this take, but I think you should elaborate. In what sense are they terrible? Why do they experience sustained popularity? What does this tell us about Lindy?

Re: The Lindy Effect

#32

Post by hyperthesis »

extragood wrote: post #19
j7ake wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bible is a hugely influential book. It is probably the most referenced book in western literature, art, and history. Reading a book is not the same as agreeing with its premises. One must also judge a book by their historical context.

My AP Lit teacher in high school encouraged us to read the bible - not for any type of religious reason - but because it is so frequently referenced by western literature, especially in older texts. If you don't pick up on the biblical allegories when reading something like Shakespeare then you'll miss critical details.

Every page of the KJB seems to have a phrase that has entered the language (e.g. give up the ghost) - though I can't be sure that those phrases weren't already popular and merely recorded.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#33

Post by adamnemecek »

dlkf wrote: post #31
adamnemecek wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I love that someone has this take, but I think you should elaborate. In what sense are they terrible? Why do they experience sustained popularity? What does this tell us about Lindy?

That people confuse Lindyness with quality.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#34

Post by 3np »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #3

There's a subset of this I think about sometimes, not sure if it's actually a thing or been looked at/is valid. Let's say I'm waiting for a package to arrive and it's late. As each minute passes, does the chance of it coming the very next minute increase or decrease? One could say it increases because since it will eventually come and I have passed all the previous minutes they haven't come, then the remaining minute…

Replace it with waiting for a bus and you have a classic textbook example for teaching Poisson process!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_point_process

https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/122722/please-expl...

Re: The Lindy Effect

#35

Post by flohofwoe »

kjellsbells wrote: post #13
marttt wrote: post #9

I 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…

TBF that's less because of the actual content of the bible, but what people in various eras read into it (except for some of the Old Testament "eye for an eye" stuff of course).

PS: ...and even though I'm agnostic, of course I have the bible in my book shelf and occasionally read it, if only for the entertainment value (not the King James version though, but the Luther version).

Re: The Lindy Effect

#36

Post by sambapa »

marttt wrote: post #20
kjellsbells wrote: post #13

Earlier 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…

Better to read Evola

Re: The Lindy Effect

#37

Post by jl6 »

marttt wrote: post #20
kjellsbells wrote: post #13

Earlier 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…

Mein Kampf is worth at least a skim, because it demonstrates that Hitler was a human being.

History positions him as an inhuman monster, and rightly so metaphorically. We are conditioned to think that he was uniquely evil in an otherworldly sense, totally unlike us, and someone like him could never arise again because we don’t have monsters these days.

But he wasn’t a unique demon. He was a human, with human emotions and motivations and failings. It’s important to recognize him (and all the rest of the Nazis) as human, because the humans of today absolutely do have the capacity to become him again.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#38

Post by flohofwoe »

lemper wrote: post #25
kjellsbells wrote: post #13

Earlier 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" is actually a good example of the "negative" Lindy effect because it was only relevant in a single country for a very short time, and even in Nazi Germany it was only popular (in the sense that there was a copy in every household) because it was given out as wedding gift by the state (pretty much nobody could be arsed to actually buy and read that drivel when it came out).

Re: The Lindy Effect

#39

Post by jrflowers »

marttt wrote: post #9

I 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…

> As a result, I almost never buy (or often even read) current-day bestsellers.

I like this strategy because it maximizes the value you get out of old books while you minimize the value of new books. A phenomenal and important book could be published today but the optimal strategy is to die before the Lindy effect becomes apparent and let another generation enjoy its value. This makes sense because books have a finite value that is divisible by the number of readers they get.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#40

Post by flohofwoe »

adamnemecek wrote: post #11
marttt wrote: post #9

I 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…

[flagged]

K&R 2nd edition is an excellent book, not just as a historical artefact, but as actual literature (not joking, it's very entertaining to read).
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