The Lindy Effect a Filter for Time

The Comedians and the Deli

It all begins, not in a sterile laboratory or a university lecture hall, but in a New York City delicatessen. The year is 1964. The place is Lindy's, a legendary spot in Midtown Manhattan where Broadway actors, gangsters, and comedians would gather over cheesecake and coffee. In an article for *The New Republic*, a writer named Albert Goldman captured a peculiar piece of folk wisdom he observed among the city's stand-up comics. They had a theory about their own careers. The comedians at Lindy's noticed that the future career expectancy of a performer was proportional to their past performance. A comic who had been headlining for a month could reasonably expect to last another month. But a seasoned veteran, someone who had been commanding the stage for five years, could confidently look forward to another five. A new show that had survived for two weeks would likely survive for two more; a show that had lasted two years could probably count on another two. This was their simple, unscientific rule of thumb for predicting who had staying power and who was just a flash in the pan. They didn't call it a heuristic or a probabilistic model. They just knew it worked. And they called it Lindy's Law. For years, this idea remained a piece of local folklore, a charming anecdote from the golden age of Broadway. It was a clever observation, but it lived in the pages of magazines, not in scientific papers. It took a brilliant and rebellious mathematician to see that the comedians at Lindy's had stumbled upon something profound—a hidden principle that governs not just the careers of entertainers, but the survival of ideas, technologies, and even empires. The joke, it turned out, was on the rest of us for not seeing it sooner.