Nice post! Found it through the forum digest newsletter. Interestingly I knew Lindy’s Law as the “Copernican principle” from Algorithms to Live By, IIRC. Searching for the term yields quite different results however, so I wonder what the connection is.
Also, I believe your webcomic example is missing a “1 -”. You seem to have calculcated p(no further webcomic will be released this year) rather than p(there will be another webcomic this year). Increasing the time frame should increase the probability, but given the formula in the example, the probability would in fact decrease over time.
The relationship between Lindy, Doomsday, and Copernicus is as follows:
The “Copernican Principle” is that “we” are not special. This is a generalisation of how the Earth is not special: it’s just another planet in the solar system, not the centre of the universe.
In John Gott’s famous paper on the Doomsday Argument, he appeals to the the Copernican Principle to assert “we are also not special in time”, meaning that we should expect ourselves to be in a typical point in the history of humanity.
The “most typical” point in history is exactly in the middle. Thus your best guess of the longevity of humanity is twice its current age: Lindy’s Law.
Nice post! Found it through the forum digest newsletter. Interestingly I knew Lindy’s Law as the “Copernican principle” from Algorithms to Live By, IIRC. Searching for the term yields quite different results however, so I wonder what the connection is.
Also, I believe your webcomic example is missing a “1 -”. You seem to have calculcated p(no further webcomic will be released this year) rather than p(there will be another webcomic this year). Increasing the time frame should increase the probability, but given the formula in the example, the probability would in fact decrease over time.
Thank you. I have corrected the mistake.
The relationship between Lindy, Doomsday, and Copernicus is as follows:
The “Copernican Principle” is that “we” are not special. This is a generalisation of how the Earth is not special: it’s just another planet in the solar system, not the centre of the universe.
In John Gott’s famous paper on the Doomsday Argument, he appeals to the the Copernican Principle to assert “we are also not special in time”, meaning that we should expect ourselves to be in a typical point in the history of humanity.
The “most typical” point in history is exactly in the middle. Thus your best guess of the longevity of humanity is twice its current age: Lindy’s Law.