Every year, bookstores are flooded with countless new releases, yet few of them are still selling steadily a few years later. Meanwhile, classics written hundreds of years ago still occupy a corner of the shelves, and it is easy to guess that they will go on being read for a long time to come. We tend to think new things are sturdier and will last longer, but in reality, things that have already endured for a long time often remain even longer into the future.
This rule of thumb, that the longer something has survived, the longer its remaining life expectancy, is called the ‘Lindy Effect.’ Unlike people or food, which wear out and spoil over time, things that do not perish, such as books, ideas, and technologies, are thought to gain a longer future with every day they survive.
This article walks step by step through the background of the name Lindy Effect, the kinds of things the effect applies to, how to estimate remaining lifespan and real cases of prediction, and finally how to use it in everyday life and where its limits lie.
Principles and Applications of the Lindy Effect
Origin and Development of the Name
Lindy's was the name of a famous restaurant on Broadway in New York City. Comedians used to gather there every night after their shows to talk. In 1964, writer Albert Goldman, in an article published in the magazine The New Republic, introduced a rule of thumb that circulated among the comedians there under the name ‘Lindy's Law.’ The idea was that you could gauge how long a comedian's career would last by looking at how much they had appeared on television.
The person who restated this idea in the language of mathematics was Benoit Mandelbrot, the mathematician famous for fractal theory. In his 1982 book The Fractal Geometry of Nature, he explained that a comedian's future career span is proportional to the length of their career so far.
The meaning widely used today was shaped by writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In his 2012 book Antifragile, he extended the Lindy Effect from people's careers to everything that does not perish, such as books, ideas, and technologies. Taleb explained that a book that has stayed in print for 40 years can be expected to stay in print for about another 40 years, and if it survives another 10 years beyond that, its expected remaining time grows by the same amount.
Why It Applies Only to Things That Do Not Perish
The Lindy Effect does not apply to everything. Things that wear down and age over time, such as people, animals, food, or machine parts, have shorter remaining lifespans the older they get. No one would say that a ninety-year-old will live longer than a ten-year-old child. Things to which the Lindy Effect applies generally share the following characteristics.
(1) They do not wear out on their own
Ideas, stories, songs, and institutions do not grow old by themselves simply because time passes. If they disappear, it is because people no longer use them.
(2) They keep being used and remade
Books are reprinted, recipes are passed down from generation to generation, and tools are made anew. As long as there are people using them, their existence continues even if their physical form changes.
(3) Having lasted long is itself proof of passing the test
Having withstood fashions, wars, and technological change over many years means that their usefulness and vitality have been proven to that extent. Time acts as a sieve that filters out the weak first.
How to Estimate Remaining Lifespan
Estimating with the Lindy Effect is very simple. You look at how long something has existed so far and assume it will continue for roughly that long again. Of course, this is not a calculation for pinpointing an exact date; it is closer to a rough comparison of which things will last longer.
- A book published a year ago vs. a 100-year-old classic: The classic that has survived 100 years is more likely to keep being read for longer.
- The wheel, the chair, the spoon: Objects whose shape has hardly changed over thousands of years are expected not to disappear easily in the future either.
- A brand-new technology vs. an old technology: A technology used for decades is more likely to survive the next 10 years than a service that is only a few months old.
There is also a case of an actual prediction made with similar thinking. When astrophysicist J. Richard Gott visited the Berlin Wall in 1969, he estimated that the wall, then 8 years old, had a 50% chance of falling sometime between about 2 years and 8 months and 24 years from then. The wall fell 20 years later, in 1989. Gott published this method as a paper in the scientific journal Nature in 1993.
Everyday Uses and Limits
The Lindy Effect is a useful criterion when choosing what to spend your time on amid a flood of new information. For example, you might look first at books that have been read for a long time rather than new releases, and at habits that have been kept for a long time rather than sudden fads. When choosing a new technology or tool, also considering how long it has been in use can reduce the risk of it quickly disappearing.
However, the Lindy Effect also has clear limits.
- Only a probability, not a prophecy (Probability): It means that old things are more likely to remain longer, not that they always will.
- Weak in the face of major change (Disruption): Just as film cameras, used for decades, were pushed aside by digital cameras, even old things can disappear quickly when the environment changes drastically.
- Only survivors are visible (Survivorship Bias): We see only the things that have lasted, while the countless things that disappeared early remain invisible, which can make the effect seem stronger than it really is.
- Not a rule for rejecting everything new (Novelty): Every classic was once a new release. New things simply have not yet had the chance to last.
In the end, the Lindy Effect reminds us that time is the most reliable judge. Rather than being captivated by the sparkle of the new, first weighing the substance of what has endured long years is the first step toward the wisdom of recognizing what will last.
