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The Lindy Effect

arxiv.org

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Re: The Lindy Effect

#41

Post by bazoom42 »

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…

> its also the source of bigotry, suffering and death for thousands of people

But are you afraid reading it will turn you into a murderous bigot?

Re: The Lindy Effect

#42

Post by actionfromafar »

hyperthesis wrote: post #32
extragood wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If they were popular before, chanches are they were popular because of influence from older versions of the Bible.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#43

Post by RamblingCTO »

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…

You overfit for classics and skip on maybe very entertaining contemporary reads. Feels weird to me to hipster out on the "I build a library of classics only". With this approach you'd never read Dark Matter, which is one of my favorites in the past few years. I also don't care about rankings, top sellers etc. etc., but contemporary stuff is still worth the read. Feels very weird to me tbh.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#44

Post by hef19898 »

unmole wrote: post #28
lemper wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Historically speaking, it is very relevant. Because it clearly shows Hitler's intent for Germany, the war and the jews way before he got into power. Other than that, it is a crappy book, the content sucks and the writing is abysmally bad. The latter fact was also something people thought back then, and most people who had the book at home didn't necessarily read it.

Another reason the book is relevant, it clearly shows the power of propaganda and how books can be used to that end.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#45

Post by vishnugupta »

I really wish that we, software developers, apply Lindy rule while choosing library/framework/language/SaaS tool etc., Lot of developers underestimate the value of collective brain power that has gone into making a system mature, not to talk about community and ecosystem support. I was extremely hesitant to get onboard Golang bandwagon 5-7 years ago. I reluctantly said OK to try it out in a non critical service and all my concerns turned out to be true.

I also apply this rule while buying car and choosing a bank. It's been interesting to see all the fintechs who badmouthed incumbent banks now going through exactly same challenges that banks went through and addressed.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#47

Post by marttt »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #43
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…

You overfit for classics and skip on maybe very entertaining contemporary reads. Feels weird to me to hipster out on the "I build a library of classics only". With this approach you'd never read Dark Matter, which is one of my favorites in the past few years. I also don't care about rankings, top sellers etc. etc., but contemporary stuff is still worth the read. Feels very weird to me tbh.

Not considering myself a hipster. I'm closely following new releases on several fields (including experimental fiction and contemporary philosophy), but I like to wait -- typically some years -- before I really read them.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#48

Post by marttt »

jl6 wrote: post #37
marttt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 emotion…

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

Excellent phrasing. I think you would love "The Kindly Ones" by Jonathan Littell [1]. What an incredible book -- oh, and, being released in 2009, it also fits my interpretation of "Lindy".

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kindly_Ones_(Littell_novel...

Re: The Lindy Effect

#49

Post by Yodel0914 »

RamblingCTO wrote: post #43
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…

You overfit for classics and skip on maybe very entertaining contemporary reads. Feels weird to me to hipster out on the "I build a library of classics only". With this approach you'd never read Dark Matter, which is one of my favorites in the past few years. I also don't care about rankings, top sellers etc. etc., but contemporary stuff is still worth the read. Feels very weird to me tbh.

You're not wrong, which is why for me longevity is only one of the factors that goes into my book select - but it is a big one.

The thing is, we have so much brilliant art and literature available that you need to filter it somehow. The likelihood that something released this year is better than something that has been heralded and great for 100 years is very, very low. Not impossible, mind you. I've definitely read modern books that have had a huge impact on me (including, ironically, Taleb, who introduced me to the Lindy effect), and art and music have a certain cultural context that can make modern expressions more relevant.

Re: The Lindy Effect

#50

Post by unmole »

hef19898 wrote: post #44
unmole wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mein Kampf While the author was very influential , I'm not sure if the book itself relevant.

Historically speaking, it is very relevant. Because it clearly shows Hitler's intent for Germany, the war and the jews way before he got into power. Other than that, it is a crappy book, the content sucks and the writing is abysmally bad. The latter fact was also something people thought back then, and most people who had the book at home didn't necessarily read it. Another reason the book is relevant, it clearly sho…

> Because it clearly shows Hitler's intent for Germany, the war and the jews way before he got into power.

It's interesting from the perspective of historiography. But it's not relevant in the way the Bible, Quran or the Gita are.

> Other than that, it is a crappy book, the content sucks and the writing is abysmally bad. The latter fact was also something people thought back then, and most people who had the book at home didn't necessarily read it.

This was my point. And in the context of TFA, it's not Lindy.

> clearly shows the power of propaganda

It wasn't an effective instrument for propaganda. The book became popular because of Hitler, not the other way round.

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