Lindy Effect | Kaelan

Lindy’s was a deli in New York where comedians gathered to gossip. They noticed a pattern: TV comedians with frequent gigs faded quickly. Those who paced their appearances lasted longer. A show running two weeks would likely last another two. A show running two years could expect two more.

The heuristic got abstracted far beyond showbiz.

For non-perishable things — ideas, technologies, books, institutions — age predicts further survival. A book in print for 50 years will probably last 50 more. A book in print for 500 years will probably last 500 more. The Bible, Homer, Euclid. Thousands of years and counting.

This inverts the usual hierarchy of new and old. We act like the newest thing is probably the best. But the newest thing is also the most fragile. The oldest is the most proven.

I find this useful as a heuristic when I’m uncertain.

A JavaScript framework from 2023 has worse odds than the spreadsheet, which has been solving business problems since VisiCalc in 1979. A cryptocurrency launched last year has worse odds than gold, which has been money for 5,000 years.

This doesn’t mean old always beats new. The printing press beat handwriting. Cars beat horses. Old things get replaced by superior alternatives all the time. But when you don’t know which new thing will survive, the Lindy bet favors the old.

Taleb formalized this in Antifragile: “Time is equivalent to disorder. Resistance to the ravages of time, what we gloriously call survival, is the ability to handle disorder.”

Things that last have survived multiple attempts to kill them. Each crisis they survive strengthens the evidence for the next one.

The effect doesn’t apply to perishable things. A 90-year-old doesn’t have 90 years of life expectancy left. Humans have natural lifespans. Technologies and ideas don’t.

Go Deeper

Books

Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb — Chapter 16 “A Lesson in Disorder” provides the formal treatment.
The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb — The earlier exploration of survivorship and prediction.