Risk

Lindy Effect

You sign up for a new app that friends rave about. It feels fresh and it fixes a small annoyance. A few months later, the company folds and your data sits behind a dead login. You still cook dinner in the cast‑iron pan your grandmother used, and it works the same every night. The paperback on your nightstand comes from a print run older than you, and it still reads fine. Some things burn out fast, like a candle. Some last years, like a book. A few outlast us, like stone.

With some things, age is not decay. It is information. If a song, a recipe, or a tool has survived for a long time, it has passed many chances to die. That survival suggests it will keep surviving. This only applies to things that do not wear out like bodies or bearings. A book in print for fifty years will likely outlast one from last fall, and a two‑year‑old app is likelier to vanish than email.

Therefore

When you are unsure between options, give a small edge to the older one. Ask whether the thing decays; if not, treat age as a forecast, not a guarantee.

A small reminder, on a laptop lid or a bookshelf, that age can be a forecast when the thing does not rot, rust, or run out.