Knowing whether old ideas are more likely to be good requires understanding whether conditions have changed in important ways.
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Horse archery was an amazing method of warfare for over a thousand years...then people invented guns, and suddenly this great idea that had stood the test of time became obsolete.
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Then again, when underlying conditions don't change much, tried-and-true approaches are probably better.
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"Learning the lessons of history" usually just means assuming ergodicity and stationarity in an informal time-series model... (end)
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Horse archery doesn’t really qualify as an idea, though.
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Sure it does, why wouldn't it?
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It’s an instant or application of an idea. So the idea is missile weapons broadly, variously atlatls or bows or rifles.
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That's just a more general idea. But more importantly, "horse archery" really refers to a whole system of warfare, emphasizing mobility, envelopment, and lack of need for supply lines. That all became unfeasible in the age of the gun.
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Ideas and applications should be disambiguated. Otherwise, at the margins, everything can be categorized as an idea. This seems baroque and not probative analytically.
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The principle I'm talking about actually applies to lots of stuff that is not an idea, so I'm not super concerned with boundary-policing the word "ideas" here.
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On the contrary, because an idea is old it could be good more often than not. Lindy Effect.
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I bet you think older airplanes are safer too

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Judging by his photo, I’m not sure he knows what an airplane is.
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Hey don't insult my uncle Adam
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Yes, but most ideas die outright. Old ideas that survive probably can provide pearls of wisdom relevant to current circumstance.
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I think most ideas get resurrected periodically forever.
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Most good ideas for sure. My ratio of good to bad ideas is quite embarrassing. I’d be surprised to see the bad ones come back in any form. I put those, generously, in the category, “learned from my mistakes.”
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just because an idea is new it doesn't mean it's good
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Maybe the age of an idea is generally a poor metric for the quality of the idea...
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the internet never forgets or remembers a time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
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